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ALL  AND  SUNDRY 


BY 


E.'*fC  RAYMOND  -yVXtYtN^^n 


ACTHOK  or 
'*VMCEN80RKD    CXLXBBITIIS 


NEW  YORK 

HENRY  HOLT  AND   COMPANY 

1920 


D 


•  •  -  •  •  • 

•  1   *  •  • 


•  •  i  i    •  • ' 


PREFACE 

Shortly  after  the  appearance  of  my  former  vol- 
ume, ^^Uncensored  Celebrities/'  I  received  a  letter 
from  a  lady  who  earnestly  advised  me  to  quit  the 
part  of  a  **sort  of  malicious  Debrett,''  and  go  in 
for  genuine  fiction,  for  which,  she  was  kind  enough 
to  say,  I  seemed  eminently  qualified. 

I  should  have  suspected  satire  but  for  one  fact. 
In  their  kindly  and  indeed  generous  references  to 
my  work,  the  public  critics  seemed  to  convey  the 
same  impression  of  detecting  a  deliberately  depre- 
ciative  intention  on  the  part  of  the  author.  Now 
every  man  has  his  vulnerable  point.  Unlike  Mr. 
Pott,  I  could  bear  being  called  an  ungranmaatical 
twaddler;  I  should  reflect  that  English  grammar 
is  a  very  uncertain  thing,  and  that  twaddle  is 
largely  a  matter  of  individual  fancy.  I  am  not 
in  the  least  concerned  when  a  very  learned  critic 
accuses  me  of  misquoting  Mr.  Lorrimer;  if  I  did 
so,  it  was  with  as  little  consciousness  as  M.  Jour- 
dain  talked  prose.  But  I  should  not  like  to  be 
thought  malicious. 

Let  me,  therefore,  hasten  to  explain  that  if  I 
have  examined  with  some  coolness  considerable 
figures   in  politics   and   letters,   it   is   with   quite 

6 

424527 


6  PEEFACE 

other  motives  than  the  satisfaction  of  a  desire 
to  deal  caustically  or  irreverently  with  established 
reputations.  What  I  do  feel  is  that  in  this  country 
the  excessive  reverence  paid  to  the  *' accredited 
hero''  is  not  a  good  but  a  bad  thing.  It  means 
that  the  politician  once  arrived,  can  do  much  as 
he  chooses,  which  is  bad  for  the  country  and  not 
good  for  the  politician.  It  means  that  our  mer- 
chants of  ideas,  once  well  established  on  the  book- 
stalls, can  sell  us  pretty  well  what  they  like.  It 
means  that  a  **name,''  however  obtained,  exerts 
the  influence  that  should  only  attach  to  a  reality. 
It  means,  finally,  that  the  public  does  not  get  the 
best  out  of  its  older  men  (since  their  second  best 
is  readily  accepted),  while  the  younger  talent  has 
a  hard  task  in  getting  recognition,  or  even  a 
living.  And  it  is  young  talent,  above  all,  of  which 
the  country  stands  most  in  need. 

Of  the  sketches  assembled  in  this  volume,  a 
number  appeared  in  Everyman,  and  others  in  The 
Outlook, 


CONTENTS 

PAQB 

THE  PEINCE  OF   WALES          ...                  .          .  9 

MARSHAL  FOCH  AND  MAESHAL  WILSON    ...  17 

PRESIDENT  WILSON 23 

VISCOUNT  HARCOURT 31 

THE  BISHOP  OF  LONDON 40 

SIR  ALFRED  MORITZ  MOND 47 

GEORGES  CLEMENCEAU 55 

MR.  JOHN  BURNS 61 

MR.  G.  K.  CHESTERTON 67 

LORD  SYDENHAM  OF  COMBE 76 

SIR  ERIC  GEDDES 84 

MR.  FRANK  BRANGWYN,  R.A 91 

DEAN  INGE 98 

SIR  JOHN  SIMON         . 105 

SIR  ALBERT  STANLEY 114 

MR.  F.  S.  OLIVER 123 

MR.  T.  P.  O'CONNOR 133 

SIR  HENRY  DALZIEL 142 

MR.  HILAIRE  BELLOO 153 

THE  DUKE  OF  SOMERSET 162 

SIR  THOMAS  BEECHAM 168 

MR.  RUDYARD   KIPLING 177 

VISCOUNT  CHAPLIN 186 


viii  CONTENTS 

Sm  AETHUE  CONAN   DOYLE 194 

MB.  EGBERT  SMILLIE 201 

MB.  J.  E.  CLYNES  AND  SOME  OTHERS  ....  208 

VISCOUNT   CAVE 217 

ME.  LEO  MAXSE 222 

ME.  HEEBEET  SAMUEL 230 

ME.  HAEOLD  BEGBIE 237 

VISCOUNT    ESHEE 245 

LOED  EENLE 252 

Sm  DONALD  MACLEAN  AND  MB.  ADAMSON  .  .  259 

LOED  EOBEET  CECIL 265 

ME.   SPEAKEB 271 

THE  GEEMAN  IN  PEACE 278 


•  •  •  >^ . 


ALL  AND  SUNDRY 

THE  PRINCE  OF  WALES 

**DuEiNG  those  four  years  I  found  my  manhood.'* 
This  remark  of  the  Prince  of  Wales  on  a  recent 
ceremonial  occasion  was  the  subject  of  much 
obvious  comment.  Regarded  in  one  light,  it  was 
a  sufficiently  obvious  remark.  The  Prince  went 
into  the  war  a  stripling;  he  has  emerged  from  it 
a  man:  even  to-day  we  consider  five-and-twenty 
grown  up.  In  1914  little  was  known  by  the 
general  public  of  the  shy,  fair-haired  lad  who 
seemed  to  have  very  little  inclination  to  show 
himself  to  his  father's  lieges.  In  1919  the  hand- 
some, well-set-up  young  Prince  bears  himself  with 
a  dignity  and  self-possession,  and  withal  a  shrewd 
understanding  of  his  audience,  that  impress  even 
the  least  impressible.  It  is  the  bearing  of  a  man 
who  has  learned  his  own  trade,  and,  therefore, 
can  think  justly  of  men  of  other  trades,  neither 
paying  them  too  much  respect  nor  too  little. 
Four  years  spent  in  close  touch  with  the  sternest 
realities  of  life  and  death  and  duty  count  for  more 
in  the  education  of  a  Prince  than  years  of  study 
or  even  of  peace  soldiering  and  sailoring.     It  was 

9 


10         ':•'.••     JLLIi.iiisrD  SUNDEY 

once'-tliQ.Aoi53p.ii«a{)pxept^  of  a  ruler  of  men; 

its  efl&cacy  is  clearly  as  great  to-day. 

But  there  was  an  implication  in  the  Prince's 
speech  which  was  not  so  generally  noticed.  He 
spoke  of  himself  as  representing  in  the  presence 
of  his  elders  the  ** younger  generation  of  England.'' 
That  younger  generation  is  scarcely  so  respectful 
to  the  pretensions  of  age  and  experience  as  it 
might  have  been,  had  things  taken  the  course 
which  a  century  free  from  serious  war  had  led 
most  people  to  expect.  Young  England  thinks 
lightly  enough  of  the  old  men  who  could  neither 
ensure  peace  nor  prepare  to  make  war  with  vigour. 
**You  got  the  country  into  this  mess;  we  got  it 
out;  we  have  paid  the  price;  we  (and  not  you) 
are  going  to  have  the  say  in  the  future."  Such, 
in  effect,  is  what  the  young  men  are  thinking, 
and  what  many  of  them  are  saying.  The  revo- 
lutionary sentiment  is  confined  to  no  single  depart- 
ment of  human  affairs.  The  elders  were  wrong 
in  one  great  matter;  why  should  they  be  right 
in  any  other?  Above  all,  why  should  age,  as  age, 
claim  to  govern  youth? 

The  revolt  of  the  young  had  begun  before  the 
war.  Thirty  years  ago  Ibsen  was  talking  of  the 
younger  generation  knocking  at  the  gate;  to-day, 
it  would  seem,  there  is  no  gate  to  knock  at.  It 
was  a  revolt  partly  agaiust  the  inequity  of  things, 


THE  PRINCE  OF  WALES  11 

but  chiefly,  perhaps,  against  their  dulness.  And 
it  is  not  altogether  fanciful  to  attribute  that  dulness 
to  the  reign  of  the  old,  and  to  explain  in  turn  the 
reign  of  the  old  by  the  reign  of  German  ideas. 
Youth  went  out  of  the  world  with  the  fall  of 
Napoleon.  Before  Waterloo  youth  commanded 
armies,  built  and  administered  Empires,  ruled 
Cabinets,  wrote  great  literature.  Clive,  Wolfe, 
and  the  younger  Pitt  had  made  themselves  immortal 
at  an  age  when  the  average  professional  man  of 
yesterday  was  still  waiting  for  a  brief  or  a  patient. 
Doubtless  the  change  is  partly  explained  by  the 
growing  complexity  of  things.  But  much,  unde- 
niably, is  also  due  to  the  exaltation  of  what  is  called 
**  organisation, "  and  organisation  in  this  sense  and 
in  this  degree  was  a  specially  German  thing.  It 
was  the  weapon  of  a  mind  unable  to  trust  to  its 
intuitions,  a  mind  patient  of  any  labour,  impervious 
to  the  disgust  which  a  monotonous  task  creates  in 
a  quick  brain,  but  easily  baffled  and  confused  by 
emergency.  To  do  things  in  the  German  way  the 
chief  qualification  is  experience,  and  though  experi- 
ence does  not  necessarily  go  with  age,  age  is 
essential  to  experience.  During  the  nineteenth 
century  all  the  world,  America  apart,  did  things 
in  the  German  way — for  the  most  part  like  a  bad 
translation.  Age  everywhere  dominated  the  public 
services,  and  to  a  large  extent  it  controlled  private 


12  ALL  AND  SUNDRY 

enterprise.  Matters  even  went  to  the  length  of 
preferring  the  dead  lion  to  the  living  dog.  Jap- 
anese history  records  that  after  the  death  of  the 
great  Hideyoshi,  while  he  was  engaged  in  the 
conquest  of  Korea,  his  body,  cunningly  embalmed 
and  dressed  in  the  habiliments  of  war,  was  placed 
on  horseback  and  marched  for  many  months  with 
the  troops,  in  order  that  neither  they  nor  the 
enemy  should  be  aware  that  the  moving  spirit  of 
the  enterprise  had  departed.  In  the  same  way, 
during  the  Victorian  time,  the  tendency  was  to  pay 
more  and  more  respect  to  names;  the  fame  of 
having  done  something  once  was  largely  accepted 
as  a  guarantee  of  present  competence.  Even  an 
actor  duly  certificated  to  have  been  funny  in  the 
sixties  was  dutifully  regarded  in  the  eighties, 
however  obsolete  and  decrepit,  as  a  comic  genius; 
while  the  hero  of  some  small  gunboat  exploit  before 
Alexandria  achieved  a  hold  on  the  public  imagina- 
tion superior  to  that  of  Cochrane  and  perhaps 
second  only  to  that  of  Nelson.  Respect  for  names, 
more  than  anything  else,  was  responsible  for 
Gordon  dying  uselessly  at  Khartum,  and  Gladstone 
labouring  without  result  at  Westminster.  Grey- 
beards with  a  memorable  past  snored  in  the 
Cabinet,  fell  asleep  on  railway  boards,  scornfully 
refuted  criticisms  at  shareholders'  meetings,  and 
even  dominated  the  hunting-field.    In  politics  and 


THE  PRINCE  OF  WALES  13 

business  alike  the  man  of  forty  was  considered 
dangerously  young. 

At  the  beginning  of  the  war  age  still  kept  its 
prestige.  K  one  grandfather  proved  obviously 
unequal  to  his  task,  the  cry  went  up  for  another 
grandfather;  it  was  long  before  it  occurred  to 
anybody  that  an  inexhaustible  reservoir  of  energy 
and  ability  existed  in  the  mass  of  nameless  young 
men  conceived  only  as  food  for  powder.  At  last 
the  cult  of  the  greybeard  was  shattered,  and  we 
are  now  on  a  wave  of  reaction  of  which  no  man 
can  foresee  the  ultimate  result.  The  young  man, 
if  he  conquers,  may  bring  about  a  very  queer 
world — queer,  that  is,  to  our  fogeyish  notions, 
though  probably  not  nearly  so  absurd  inherently 
as  the  world  of  yesterday.  It  will  not  be,  I 
fancy,  a  world  after  the  notions  of  Mr.  and  Mrs. 
Sidney  Webb.  That  is  a  distinctly  middle-aged 
vision.  The  young  man  has  no  fancy  for  living 
in  a  rabbit  hutch,  even  with  due  provision  of 
bran  and  sow-thistle.  He  will  plunge  feverishly 
into  all  the  mechanical  part  of  the  world  of  Mr. 
H.  G.  Wells;  the  romance  of  machinery  possesses 
him.  But  he  will  care  very  little  about  Mr. 
Wells's  earthly  Paradise,  and  nothing  whatever 
about  Mr.  Wells's  ** Invisible  King."  On  the 
other  hand,  he  may  very  well  make  hay  of  much 
that  Mr.  Wells's  ineffective  scythe  has  threatened. 


14  ALL  AND  SUNDRY 

For  how  much  of  the  very  warp  and  woof  of 
European  tradition  during  the  last  century  is 
merely  sublimated  fogeyism?  The  young  have 
acquiesced,  because  there  seemed  no  clear  alter- 
native, so  crushing  was  the  weight  of  the  half-dead 
hand.  But  they  acquiesced  grumblingly.  Liter- 
nally  they  rejected  the  standards  prescribed  for 
them  in  politics,  economics,  art,  and  religion,  and 
now  they  have  the  power  to  reshape  the  world 
they  will  doubtless  do  the  thing  thoroughly. 

It  is  a  great  opportunity;  radical  change  could 
only  come  in  some  such  way,  through  the  insurgence 
of  men  and  women  still  unbroken  to  routine.  But 
if  it  is  an  opportunity,  it  is  also  a  danger;  and  it 
is  well  that  at  this  time  there  has  grown  into 
manhood  a  Prince  who  really  does  represent  the 
younger  generation,  who  knows  how  it  feels  about 
the  present  and  future,  who  shares  its  interest 
in  the  new  mechanical  marvels,  its  eager  envisage- 
ment  of  a  more  expanded  life,  its  scorn  for  much 
that  was  obsolete  and  effete,  but  who  also  repre- 
sents the  older  generation,  and  must  feel  in  his 
bones  the  insanity  of  too  abrupt  a  break  with  the 
past,  much  as  he  appreciates  the  necessity  of 
rational  advance. 

Li  one  way  it  is  by  a  return  to  the  past  that 
the  Prince  is  best  serving  an  extremely  modern 
English  need — ^that  of  a  leadership,  the  more  real 


THE  PRINCE  OF  WALES  15 

because  it  is  spiritual  rather  than  mechanical, 
independent  of  the  vagaries  of  votes.  It  is  his 
great  opportunity  to  restore  to  monarchy  some- 
thing it  has  lacked  for  the  last  two  centuries  or 
more.  We  misunderstand  much  in  English  history 
when  we  lay  all  the  stress  on  the  Treaty  of  Dover 
and  none  on  Charles  II.  feeding  the  ducks  in 
St.  James's  Park.  The  successors  of  Charles 
signed  no  secret  compacts.  But  they  fed  no  ducks. 
They  carried  out  their  contract,  and  consumed 
their  wages,  but  they  had  neither  the  inclina- 
tion nor  the  capacity  to  win  for  their  office  the 
veneration,  or  for  their  persons  the  affection, 
of  the  mass  of  the  common  people.  The  Crown 
became  one  of  the  official  posts.  The  levee,  from 
being  an  essentially  human  thing,  rose  (or  sank) 
into  a  solemnity.  There  was  a  greater  distance 
between  the  Crown  and  the  classes  and  an  addi- 
tional gulf  between  the  classes  and  the  people. 
It  is,  perhaps,  not  fanciful  to  attribute  something 
of  the  character  of  modern  industrialism  to  that 
great  disturbance  of  the  balance  of  English  life 
which  dates  from  the  moment  that  Dutch  troops 
mounted  guard  in  Whitehall. 

It  is  hard  to  create  a  legend.  It  is  even  harder 
to  revive  one.  Yet  that  is  the  task  the  Prince 
of  Wales,  probably  quite  unconsciously,  is  attempt- 
ing.   It  is  his  splendid  business  to  complete  the 


16  ALL  AND  SUNDEY 

valuable  work  of  his  father  and  grandfather,  and 
to  bring  back  the  good  that  departed,  amid  such 
evil,  when  the  last  Stuart  packed  his  trunks.  He 
has  everything  to  help  him,  and  not  least  the  fact 
that  no  Baron  Stockmar  presided  over  his  educa- 
tion. For  he  is  all  English,  and,  while  the  Army 
has  given  him  his  manhood,  his  boyhood  was 
never  killed  by  heavy  tutors.  Those  who  watch 
him  closely  in  public  feel  that  behind  the  mask 
there  is  a  very  lively  sense  of  humour,  and  no  too 
oppressive  respect  for  the  formalities  that  hedge 
princes. 


MARSHAL   FOCH   AND    MARSHAL   WK-SON 

That  shyness  of  the  Englishman  which  makes 
him  in  foreign  company  a  piece  of  awkwardness 
entirely  surrounded  by  good  form  is  curiously 
illustrated  in  our  military  history.  We  have 
fought  many  Continental  wars;  we  have  had  all 
sorts  of  Continental  allies,  by  whom  we  have  done 
generally  more  than  our  duty.  But  I  know  hardly 
an  instance  of  warm  and  enduring  friendship 
between  a  great  English  soldier  and  a  foreigner 
co-operating  with  him.  Marlborough  **got  on'* 
well  with  Eugene;  but  Marlborough  got  on  with 
all  men  who  did  not  want  to  borrow  sixpence; 
no  man  better  understood  the  art  of  getting  on 
in  all  its  branches  and  all  its  senses.  But  of  any- 
thing resembling  affection  there  was  none  between 
these  great  collaborators.  Wellington,  again,  got 
on  with  regular  Prussian  savages  as  well  as  with 
savage  Spanish  irregulars;  but  we  know  exactly 
how  much  love  was  lost  between  him  and  Blucher. 
But  for  a  happy  accident  the  late  war  would 
have  afforded  no  exception  to  the  rule.  Between 
most  French  and  British  generals  relations  were 
correct.  Between  some  they  were,  like  the  Scots- 
man's change,  only  just  correct.    Only  in  the  case 

17 


18  ALL  AND  SUNDEY 

of  Ferdinand  Foch  and  Henry  Wilson  is  to  be 
found  the  kind  of  liking  which  breaks  down  all 
barriers  of  race,  language,  tradition,  and  religion. 
Yet  no  two  men  could  be  less  alike..  Their 
physical  differences  well  typify  the  other  con- 
trasts. Foch,  short  and  stocky,  is  essentially  the 
Latin  of  the  South;  Wilson,  looking,  with  his 
gauntness,  even  more  than  his  great  height,  only 
wants  a  winged  helmet  to  suggest  some  gnarled 
Viking  giant  in  perfect  training.  Foch  is  a 
Catholic,  in  whom  devotion  to  his  faith  assumes 
the  violence  of  a  passion.  The  other  is  an  Ulster- 
man  in  politics  and  religion — ^need  more  be  said? 
Foch  saw  the  light  in  that  sunny  old  city  of 
Tarbes  which  has  acknowledged  French,  Spanish, 
and  English  conquerors.  Wilson  was  born  in 
Ireland,  married  in  Ireland,  and  remains  as  Irish 
as  man  can  well  be.  Foch  has  the  poise  of  a 
natural  diplomatist;  Wilson  will  always  make  an 
enemy  rather  than  refrain  from  making  a  good 
point.  His  candour,  indeed,  is  sometimes  em- 
barrassing and  often  quite  unnecessary.  It  was 
his  honesty  or  his  indiscretion,  call  it  what  you 
will,  that  prevented  his  playing  in  the  early  stages 
of  the  war  the  part  appropriate  to  his  great 
abilities.  It  has  been  said  he  * 'intrigued''  in 
the  Ulster  affair,  but  intrigue  implies  secrecy, 
and  Sir  Henry  called  his  co-conspirators  into  a 


FOCH  AND  WILSON  19 

circle  with  a  megaphone.  Nothing  need  be  said 
here  about  the  propriety  or  otherwise  of  his  con- 
duct at  this  time.  But  if  it  was  reprehensible, 
it  was  not  mean.  He  did  not  stab  in  the  dark. 
But  he  did  most  openly  oppose  Mr.  Asquith,  and 
Mr.  Asquith  never  forgave  him.  Mr.  Asquith 
could  not  or  would  not  understand  that,  as  Madame 
Dubarry  said  about  morality,  tout  ga  est  si  pure- 
ment  geographique,  and  that  things  mattering  very 
much  at  the  Curragh  mattered  nothing  at  St.  Omer. 
Foch  and  Wilson,  then,  are  very  different  men. 
But  both  have  qualities  in  common  which  explain 
a  friendship  far  transcending  the  limits  usual  in 
this  country.  They  are  not  only  friends;  they 
are  the  gayest  of  comrades,  who  will  exchange 
caps  and  dance  the  Can-can  together  with  the 
abandon  of  two  students  of  the  Quartier  Latin. 
Both  are  men  of  extraordinary  courage :  men  whose 
spirits  rise  with  emergency,  and  who  are  never 
quite  so  gaily  defiant,  so  completely  masters  of 
themselves,  as  when  thoroughly  cornered.  **I  am 
outnumbered,  out-equipped,  inferior  in  morale,  with- 
out reserves:  hon  j^attaque/'  is  the  typical  attitude 
of  Foch;  Wilson  is  equally  audacious  and  cheerful 
amid  daunting  difficulties.  With  both  the  most 
complicated  ideas  find  the  clearest  and  most  articu- 
late expression.  Foch  has  in  a  quite  special  sense 
the  French  faculty  of  finding  the  just  word  for 


20  ALL  AND  SUNDEY 

the  precise  thought.  He  sees  things  like  lightning, 
and,  never  deceiving  himself,  he  cannot  bewilder 
others.  Every  order  of  his  is  sun-clear.  His  mili- 
tary lectures  were  miracles  of  lucidity.  Such 
power  as  his  of  seeing  every  part  in  due  relation 
to  the  whole  belongs  only  to  the  highest  genius. 
No  general  ever  had  a  greater  command  of  detail; 
none  was  ever  more  resolved  not  to  let  detail 
command  him.  He  has  never  been  without  time 
for  lunch,  or  for  the  word  of  praise  to  the  meanest 
who  has  earned  it.  A  happy  touch  of  true  French 
scepticism  is  not  wanting.  According  to  all 
German  rules,  he  should  have  lacked  ^* objectivity''; 
he  should  have  been  led  astray  by  the  tyranny 
of  his  emotions,  while  the  iron  men  of  the  Moltke 
tradition  envisaged  each  problem  with  the  icy  de- 
tachment of  pure  intellectualism.  Instead,  while 
German  commanders  consistently  let  wishes  father 
thoughts,  Ferdinand  Foch,  to  the  last  minute  of 
the  war,  remained  master  equally  of  his  ardent 
and  indomitable  heart,  and  his  cool  and  ironic 
head. 

To  the  friendship  on  equal  terms  of  such  a  man 
the  passport  must  be  countersigned  by  high  in- 
telligence. Sir  Henry  Wilson's  very  remarkable 
intellect  was  the  first  quality  that  ensured  him 
the  interest  of  Foch.  The  two  men  were  thrown 
much  together  in  the  days  before  the  war.    Sir 


FOCH  AND  WILSON  21 

Henry  Wilson's  work  in  co-ordinating  plans  to 
meet  the  emergency  which  actually  befell  is  little 
known  to  the  public.  But  it  was  of  the  highest 
possible  importance.  As  Commandant  of  the  Staff 
College,  he  exercised  a  great  influence  on  the 
improvement  of  British  Staff  work.  As  Director 
of  Military  Operations  during  the  four  years 
preceding  the  war  he  took  a  principal  share  in 
bringing  the  arrangements  for  the  Expeditionary 
Force  to  that  marvellous  pitch  of  perfection  which 
astounded  the  most  competent  and  least  friendly 
critics,  the  German  Great  General  Staff.  To  him, 
especially,  we  owe  the  establishment  of  intimate 
relations  with  the  French  Army  allowing  of  the 
closest  co-operation.  For  this  task  General  Wilson 
was  exceptionally  qualified.  In  the  first  place,  he 
was  not  merely  alive  to  the  danger;  he  was  pos- 
sessed with  the  consciousness  of  it;  Hannibal  was 
not  more  convinced  of  his  mission.  Secondly,  he 
had  a  most  unusual  understanding  of  the  French 
character,  and  a  still  more  unusual  faith  in  the 
strength  underlying  all  its  superficial  infirmities. 
The  surprise  of  the  **new  France''  was  none  to 
him;  he  knew  the  old  France  too  well  to  over- 
rate the  accident  of  1870.  Thirdly,  he  spoke 
French  really  well,  and  knew  France  like  his  own 
country.  But  above  all  the  way  of  the  man  was 
an  asset  of  supreme  importance.     To  the  French 


22  ALL  AND  SUNDRY 

he  was  wholly  bon  type.  Before  his  humour,  his 
dash,  his  kindliness,  the  shrewd  judgment  concealed 
beneath  his  good-nature,  the  wit  that  appealed  to  a 
people  tolerant  of  anything  hut  dulness,  difficulties 
melted  away  that  might  well  have  proved  insuper- 
able to  some  General  John  Bull,  K.C.B.,  with  his 
conscientious  brains  of  wool  and  his  faultless 
manners  of  ice.  Wilson  soon  came  to  stand,  in 
French  eyes,  for  Great  Britain — for  a  reformed 
Great  Britain,  quite  distinct  from  the  old  Albion 
of  milords  and  Punic  faith.  The  British  Army 
attained  a  new  unofficial  title.  It  was  '^Varmee 
douhle-iou/' 

It  was  during  this  time  that  the  foundation  was 
laid  for  that  friendship  between  the  Marshal  and 
the  General  which  was  afterwards  to  prove  so 
fertile.  But  it  was  long  before  the  two  friends 
came  together.  Politics  kept  in  comparative  inac- 
tivity the  one  man  of  commanding  genius  in  the 
French  Army  and  perhaps  the  most  original  mind 
at  the  disposal  of  Great  Britain.  In  breaking 
at  once  the  taboo  in  France  M.  Clemenceau  ren- 
dered the  Alliance  the  greatest  of  all  his  services. 
In  deciding,  after  much  opposition,  to  break  it  in 
England,  Mr.  Lloyd  George  added  the  little  more 
that  is  so  much.  Foch  at  least  will  never  minimise 
the  difference  between  a  co-worker  who  anticipated 
and  co-workers  who  acquiesced. 


PEESIDENT  WILSON 

EvEKY  reader  of  romance  knows  that  discourag- 
ing part  of  the  story  when  the  Unknown  Knight 
is  liquidated  as  a  mystery,  and  not  yet  re-estab- 
lished as  a  going  concern  of  human  interest.  We 
seem  to  have  arrived  at  something  like  the  same 
stage  in  the  history  of  that  very  able  and  powerful 
personage  who  is  for  the  moment  head  of  the 
singular  form  of  monarchy  known  as  the  United 
States  of  America. 

President  Wilson  has  not  changed,  but  he  seems 
changed,  not  so  much  because  we  see  him  from 
a  different  angle,  as  because  we  see  him  in  a  differ- 
ent atmosphere.  Prospero  is  Prospero  still,  but 
his  **so  potent  art*'  is  no  longer  exerted  to  shake 
*4he  strong-based  promontory,''  and  *^by  the  spurs 
pluck  up  the  pine  and  cedar";  Prospero  instead  is 
busied  in  the  practical  politics  of  Milan  and 
Naples — on  the  whole,  rather  a  descent  for 
Prospero.  Up  to  the  Armistice  President  Wilson 
was  a  sort  of  Jupiter  in  his  remote  Olympus.  He 
was  not  *^ careless  of  mankind";  mankind  has  never 
had  a  more  conscientious  guardian.  But  he  did 
seem  to  survey  mankind  from  a  height,  and  con- 
trived to  let  mankind  know  it.    In  going  to  Paris, 

23 


24  ALL  AND  SUNDRY 

however,  Mr.  Wilson  came  flat-footed  to  earth,  and 
thereafter  rather  resembled  Jupiter  when  he  con- 
descended to  engage  in  the  contentions  of  mortals ; 
tripping  up  one  hero,  seizing  the  heel  of  another, 
shielding  a  third  with  his  buckler,  or  invoking  a 
general  fog  to  cover  the  retreat  of  a  fourth.  It 
is  inevitable  that  in  such  a  rough-and-tumble, 
Jupiter  must  lose  some  morsel  of  his  majesty. 
Olympus  has  no  doubt  its  points  as  a  place  of 
residence,  but  it  has  one  conspicuous  disadvantage : 
one  cannot  go  away  for  a  change  without  people 
talking.  A  single  week-end  at  the  seaside  will 
compromise  your  reputation  as  a  divinity. 

It  is,  however,  merely  an  inverted  compliment 
to  say  that  Mr.  Wilson,  as  a  practical  negotiator, 
has  perhaps  rather  impaired  the  impression  he 
made  as  the  eloquent  prophet  of  a  new  inter- 
national dispensation.  He  attained  such  a  height 
that  some  declension  was  doubtless  inevitable. 
His  position,  of  course,  favoured  him.  He  had 
leisure,  even  after  he  had  led  his  country  to  its 
destined  part  in  the  great  crusade,  to  act  the 
part  of  spiritual  munition-maker  for  the  Allies. 
Unlike  European  statesmen,  his  vision  was  free 
from  the  immediate  smoke  and  dust  of  the  battle- 
field; his  brain  was  not  inflamed;  his  heart 
responded  to  emotions  sincere  enough,  but  neces- 
sarily weak  in  comparison  with  those  that  affected 


PRESIDENT  WILSON  25 

men  who  had  lived  four  years  in  hell.  Thus  it 
was  his  natural  no  less  than  his  splendid  part 
to  hold  up  in  a  world  gone  mad  and  lawless  the 
sacred  Labarum  of  the  legality  and  the  brother- 
hood of  man.  To  his  lips  came  without  effort 
the  great  platitudes  which  seem  the  cruellest 
paradox  in  such  times,  and  it  was  well  for  the 
world  that  the  man  most  free  to  think  without 
passion  was  also  a  man  so  supremely  qualified 
to  think  with  justice.  He  may  have  seemed 
to  some  a  thought  too  liberal.  He  may  have 
appeared  occasionally  to  approach  too  nearly  for 
weak  man  that  superhuman  tolerance  which  looks 
as  kindly  on  the  appetite  of  the  wolf  as  on  the 
innocence  of  the  lamb.  But,  given  the  point  of 
view,  it  could  hardly  have  been  better  expressed 
than  by  Mr.  Wilson.  When  he  declared  for  a 
neutrality  not  only  in  act  and  form,  but  in  word 
and  even  in  thought;  when  he  brushed  aside  all 
considerations  of  wounded  national  and  personal 
pride  as  nothing  in  the  scale  against  the  chance  of 
America  being  able  to  fulfil  her  mission  of  ** uniting 
mankind*';  when  he  opposed  only  his  moral  sense 
and  his  typewriter  to  the  armed  Apollyon  of 
Berlin;  when,  finally,  he  declared  for  ** force  to 
the  utmost*'  against  an  unteachable  and  incor- 
rigible Germany — through  all  that  long  Odyssey 
of   argument   Mr.   Wilson   carried    the   idiom    of 


26  ALL  AND  SUNDEY 

statesmanship  to  a  level  of  lofty  and  impressive  elo- 
quence perhaps  never  so  consistently  maintained. 

One  or  two  mistakes,  of  course,  he  made.  There 
was  a  shrill,  querulous,  and  altogether  earthy 
tone  about  one  or  two  of  his  blockade  expostula- 
tions to  Great  Britain  that  presented  rather  a 
jarring  contrast  with  the  high  note  of  moral 
conviction  in  his  appeals  to  the  ^^  great  Govern- 
ment'^ of  Imperial  Germany.  And  above  all,  there 
was  that  quite  horrid  solecism  of  ^^too  proud  to 
fighf — the  quaintest  error,  surely,  ever  made  by 
a  man  of  first-class  intelligence.  The  best  comment 
on  the  lapse  of  the  great  American  was  American. 
On  the  New  Jersey  seaboard  at  the  time  there 
happened  to  be  a  plague  of  sharks,  and  a  cruel  wit 
described  the  natives  as  *^too  proud  to  bathe. '* 
It  is  the  kind  of  phrase  of  which  men  die  politi- 
cally; that  Mr.  Wilson  lived  despite  it  is  proof 
enough,  if  any  were  needed,  of  his  real  strength. 

I  should  not  recall  the  phrase  here,  but  that  it 
does  seem  to  illustrate  the  one  weakness  of  an 
indubitably  great  man — a  weakness  which  may 
yet  prevent  his  wholly  fulfilling  the  purpose  to 
which  he  is  devoted.  I  may,  perhaps,  best  illus- 
trate what  I  mean  by  a  quotation: 


"His  life  was  gentle,  and  the  elements 
So  mixed  in  him,  that  nature  might  stand  up, 
And  say  to  all  the  world,  This  was  a  man." 


PRESIDENT  WILSON  27 

The  important  word  in  this  noble  eulogy  is 
*' mixed.''  It  is  possible,  say  the  men  of  science, 
to  produce  separately  by  chemical  means  every 
constituent  of  a  glass  of  vintage  port.  The  one 
thing  science  cannot  do  is  to  mix  them  so  as  to 
make  a  glass  of  port:  put  them  together,  and  only 
a  nauseous  mess  results.  Some  gifted  human 
beings  are  so  mysteriously  deficient.  There  is  a 
type  of  man  who  possesses  most  of  the  qualities  of 
greatness,  but  lacks  the  one  quality  of  all — the 
mysterious  force  that  fuses  them  into  a  living 
whole.  The  Italian  Eclectic  school  of  painting 
illustrated  this  imperfect  synthesis.  It  aimed  at 
perfection  by  the  apparently  rational  plan  of  com- 
bining all  possible  perfections.  It  strove  at  once 
for  the  fire  of  Michael  Angelo,  for  the  design  of 
the  Eoman  school,  for  the  glowing  colour  of  Lom- 
bardy,  the  action  and  light  and  shade  of  the 
Venetians,  for  Correggio  's  grace  and  the  symmetry 
of  Raphael.  It  failed.  The  Caracci  were  no 
doubt  great  painters,  but  leagues  behind  the 
greatest.  Is  it  altogether  fanciful  to  see  in  Presi- 
dent Wilson  something  of  this  imperfect  aggre- 
gation of  perfections,  an  example  of  what  we  may 
call  the  synthetic  man — a  sort  of  antipodes  of  the 
monster  in  **Jekyll  and  Hyde'':  compact  of  all 
the  virtues  instead  of  all  the  vices,  and  yet,  like 
Hyde,  not  quite  human,  because  incomplete? 


28  ALL  AND  SUNDRY 

It  is  true  that  he  has  many  wholly  human 
attributes.  He  plays  golf  with  resolute  inexpert- 
ness.  He  sings  glees  with  determination.  He  tells 
excellent  stories,  and  will  even  listen  to  the  stories 
of  others.  He  once  composed  a  Limerick  on  the 
subject  of  his  masterful  and  adventurous  nose — 
and  gave  it  to  the  reporters.  He  sometimes  **  re- 
ceives''  in  white  flannel  trousers,  but  is  so  far 
human  (and  Presidential)  that  he  would  very 
probably  object  if  an  ambassador  called  on  him  in 
garb  that  was  not  ** protocol.''  Even  at  Prince- 
ton he  was  the  least  donnish  of  dons.  When  he 
taught  a  girls'  school  the  girls  appear  to  have 
been  interested  in  him,  or  at  least  in  his  moustache 
— ^which  (on  discovering  the  fact)  he  promptly 
sacrificed  in  the  interests  of  higher  female  culture. 
He  himself  has  protested  against  the  legend  that 
grew  round  him  in  his  neutral  days — that  legend 
of  a  combined  typewriter  and  calculating  machine. 
His  constant  embarrassment,  he  says,  is  to  restrain 
his  emotions;  he  feels  himself  often  **a  far  from 
extinct  volcano." 

All  this  is  no  doubt  true;  it  is  also  true  that  on 
certain  great  subjects  no  living  statesman  can 
express  more  exactly  the  feelings  and  aspirations 
of  the  plain  ordinary  man.  But  it  is  equally  just 
to  say  that  in  other  directions  a  quite  small  allow- 
ance of  average  human  nature  would  enable  the 


PRESIDENT  WILSON  29 

President  to  avoid  grave  errors  of  judgment.  The 
late  Mr.  Roosevelt,  for  example,  could  not,  with 
Mr.  Wilson's  patient  skill,  have  stripped  Germany's 
case  of  one  fallacy  after  another,  as  one  peels 
an  artichoke,  till  no  shred  of  it  remained.  But 
Mr.  Roosevelt  would  not  have  tried;  he  knew  from 
the  first,  on  instinct,  that  Germany  had  no  case; 
he  smelt  across  the  Atlantic  the  smoke  of  Louvain 
and  the  taint  of  civilian  carnage,  and  that  was 
enough.  Mr.  Roosevelt  was  keenly  alive  to  the 
necessity  of  consulting  American  prejudices  and 
flattering  American  amour  propre.  But  Mr.  Roose- 
velt would  have  been  moved  by  instinct,  if  by 
nothing  else,  from  emphasising  the  fact  that  of 
798  American  soldiers  lost  at  sea,  750  went  down 
with  a  British  transport,  while  omitting  the  other 
quite  relevant  fact  that  by  far  the  greater  part 
of  the  whole  two  millions  travelled  safely  in  British 
bottoms.  Finally,  Mr.  Roosevelt,  a  very  human 
type,  had  many  enemies,  but  also  hosts  of  friends 
who  felt  for  him  as  Bardolph  for  Falstaff — **  would 
I  were  with  him,"  whether  in  office  or  elsewhere. 
Mr.  Wilson  does  not  inspire  that  warm  personal 
loyalty.  He  is  respected  by  all,  feared  by  some, 
perhaps  disliked  by  not  a  few.  But,  while  no 
man  speaks  more  about  the  people,  none  could 
well  have  fewer  points  of  contact  with  the  people. 


30  ALL  AND  SUNDEY 

Louis  XI.  was  hardly  narrower  in  his  circle  of 
confidants. 

In  some  ways  this  temperament  is  well  suited 
to  the  task  of  a  reconciler  of  mankind.  It  is 
above  the  smaller  prejudices  and  jealousies.  But 
it  was  seen  at  its  best  when  the  main  question  was 
the  statement  of  first  principles.  It  was  perhaps 
less  happily  adapted  to  the  adjustment  of  the 
myriad  of  important  details.  As  **  mouthpiece  of 
universal  democracy,"  dealing  with  pure  ideas, 
President  Wilson  was  without  doubt  a  shining 
success.  It  is  still  too  early  for  a  reasoned  esti- 
mate of  his  stature  as  a  practical  statesman  dealing 
with  questions  in  which  body  and  soul  are  both 
concerned.  But  one  feels  just  a  little  as  one 
does  on  taking  tea  with  a  Bishop  after  he  has 
delivered  his  charge.  The  lawn  sleeves  are  no 
longer  there,  and  the  gaiters  are  very  visible;  one 
is  conscious  of  the  fallible  human  being,  the  more 
conscious  because  of  the  veneration  lately  felt  for 
him  in  his  pontifical  character.  Bishops  ought 
never  to  take  tea,  or  to  forsake  splendid 
generalities. 


VISCOUNT  HAECOUBT 

The  House  of  Lords  is  in  the  main  a  place  of 
sepulture,  but  it  permits  of  occasional  resurrec- 
tions. Those  who  saw  Mr.  Lewis  Harcourt 
**  quietly  inurned^'  in  the  last  month  of  1916  should, 
therefore,  be  prepared  to  see  the  **  ponderous  and 
marble  jaws"  of  his  resting-place  open  at  any 
appropriate  moment.  For  despite  his  apparent 
lifelessness,  he  is,  in  fact,  no  more  reposeful  than 
Hamlet's  parent,  and  perhaps,  as  in  the  case  of 
that  very  human  ghost,  purgatorial  fires  have  not 
yet  disposed  of  the  instinct  of  retaliation. 

To  purse  the  metaphor.  Viscount  Harcourt  is 
likely  to  take  much  the  same  line  as  the  vanished 
Majesty  of  Denmark.  It  is  his  nature  to  work 
by  suggestion,  and,  while  causing  a  vague  un- 
easiness, to  reveal  himself  only  at  his  own  time 
and  to  the  right  person.  But,  like  the  ghost,  he 
can  talk  to  excellent  purpose  on  occasion,  and 
determine  the  play  without  taking  much  part  in 
it.  One  cannot  decently  apostrophise  so  dignified 
a  phantom  as  **old  mole'';  but  there  is  just  a 
suggestion  of  the  mole  in  Viscount  Harcourt.  He 
is  an  expert  in  tunnelling,  and  yet  no  dirt  ever 
clings   to   him.    Lord   Eosebery   is   said   to   have 

31 


32  ALL  AND  SUNDRY 

remarked  that  ''young  Lewis  Harcourt  upset  his 
apple-earf ;  and  common  rumour  said  much  the 
same  thing.  ''Lulu''  was  the  most  filial  of  sons. 
He  reverenced  Sir  William,  and  founded  himself 
upon  that  great  man,  much  as  the  younger 
Chamberlain  founded  himself  on  the  elder.  He 
believed  Sir  William  to  have  been  badly  treated; 
he  had  great  faith  in  Sir  William's  Liberalism  and 
little  in  Lord  Rosebery's;  nothing  more  natural 
than  that  he  should  exercise  at  Lord  Rosebery's 
expense  those  talents  which  he  possessed,  even 
at  a  tender  age,  in  a  rather  unusual  degree.  Yet 
his  character  was  in  no  way  prejudiced  by  the 
suspicion  of  having  politically  assassinated  an 
Earl.  His  moral  stature  remained  in  strict  cor- 
respondence with  his  stately  physical  figure;  and, 
with  better  founded  confidence  than  Mr.  Zephaniah 
Scadder,  he  could  display  his  white  and  jewelled 
fingers  to  all  and  sundry  with  the  challenge :  ' '  Feel 
my  hands,  young  man;  air  they  clean  or  air  they 
dirty?" 

To  such  a  query  only  one  reply  was  ever  pos- 
sible. Those  aristocratic  extremities  were  pure  as 
the  driven  snow,  from  the  shirt-cuff  of  white 
samite,  mystic,  wonderful,  to  the  carefully  pared 
finger  nails,  pink  with  Norman  blood.  Lord 
Harcourt  is  an  intriguer  to  the  marrow  of  his 
bones,  but  a  well-bred  intriguer;  of  such  was  the 


VISCOUNT  HARCOURT  33 

Kingdom  of  the  Wliig  Heaven.  He  plays  the 
game  like  a  gentleman,  because  it  really  is  to  him 
a  gentleman's  game.  He  delights  in  *  bricks"; 
but  from  the  first  trick  to  the  last  they  must  be 
got  by  skill,  and  memory  of  what  cards  are  out. 
Not  by  cheating.  As  Miss  Bolo  would  say,  he 
will  **  return  the  diamond,  lead  the  club,  rough 
the  spade,  lead  through  the  honour,  bring  out 
the  ace,  play  up  to  the  king'';  but  he  will  have 
nothing  to  say  to  the  arts  of  the  professional  sharp. 
That  sort  of  thing  is  simply  **not  done"  in  the 
circles  adorned  by  Viscount  Harcourt.  Less 
scrupulous  gamblers,  with  cards  up  their  sleeves, 
and  little  mirrors  that  tell  them  more  than  they 
should  know  about  the  other  players'  hands,  are 
common  enough  in  modem  politics;  the  mere 
knuckle-duster  man,  who  relies  on  violence  when 
intellect  fails,  is  not  altogether  unknown.  My 
Lord  Harcourt  marches,  very  erectly,  out  of  sus- 
picious company  of  that  kind.  He  will  neither 
**do"  nor  be  ^^done"  irregularly,  but  all  the  same 
he  longs  for  a  quiet  little  rubber,  and  looks  forward 
to  the  time  when  the  swell  mobsmen  will  get 
arrested  or  the  supply  of  greenhorns  fail,  and 
he  can  play  his  own  game  with  men  of  his  own 
kind. 

His     game,     of    course,    is    the    old-fashioned 
political  whist,  the  whist  of  our  ancestors,  going 


34  ALL  AND  SUNDRY 

so  well  with  old  port,  antique  oak  panelling,  a 
Chippendale  card  table,  and  a  general  atmosphere 
of  eighteenth-century  wealth  and  cosiness;  the  old- 
fashioned  leisurely  long  whist,  with  honours. 
Auction  bridge  and  other  products  of  modem 
f everishness  he  dislikes ;  and  he  is  none  too  pleased 
to  be  pestered  with  women  in  the  card-room.  His 
objection  to  the  woman  voter  was  essentially  that 
of  the  whist  player  who  feels  that  women  cannot 
be  relied  on  to  maintain  the  full  solemnity  the 
game  demands.  On  that  subject  he  was  cross 
with  Viscount  Grey  as  with  an  eccentric  of  his 
own  class.  A  very  different  feeling  was  roused 
by  Mr.  Lloyd  George's  continual  itch  to  introduce 
games  livelier,  noisier,  less  stately  and  patrician. 
He  admires  Mr.  Asquith  immensely  as  a  deft 
player  of  the  right  class;  tolerates  the  McKennas 
and  Runcimans,  and  does  not  even  object  to  a 
well-conducted  Samuel  or  so.  But  when  the  card- 
room  is  filled  with  noisy  fellows,  who  play  for  the 
stakes  rather  than  the  game,  the  noble  Viscount 
withdraws  to  a  quiet  corner  in  the  full  assurance 
that,  given  enough  rope,  they  will  hang  themselves. 
He  is  in  such  retirement  just  now,  a  retirement 
not  wholly  without  menace  to  certain  revellers  in 
possession.  When  Mr.  Lewis  Harcourt  magnifi- 
cently permitted  the  King  to  do  himself  the 
pleasure  of  reviving  the  old  Harcourt  Viscounty 


VISCOUNT  HARCOURT  35 

he  bade  farewell  in  fitting  terms  to  his  late  con- 
stituents of  Rossendale.  His  health,  he  said,  would 
no  longer  permit  of  his  appearance  on  the  election- 
eering platform;  but  it  was  quite  adequate  to 
administrative  work.  In  other  words,  the  Lord 
Viscount  will  not  engage  in  what  Mr.  Morgan  called 
a  **holtercation''  with  anybody.  He  will  just  wait, 
as  a  nobleman  with  a  twelfth-century  pedigree 
should,  until  his  time  comes.  Then  he  will  be 
ready  with  all  his  assets :  a  manner  that  was  always 
rather  too  precious  for  the  modern  House  of  Com- 
mons, a  wit  pleasantly  mordant,  a  practical  capacity 
not  to  be  despised,  and  a  political  shrewdness 
useful  to  any  leader,  perhaps  not  inadequate  in 
some  circumstances  to  leadership  itself. 

Will  the  time  ever  come?  Or  is  the  day  of 
Harcourtian  Whiggism  gone  for  aye?  Much  de- 
pends on  the  mood  of  the  British  people  when 
it  is  finally  free  from  the  pre-occupations  of  foreign 
affairs.  When  Viscount  Harcourt  says,  as  he  did 
say  some  time  ago,  that  the  British  constitution 
represents  *Hhe  most  perfect  and  most  complete 
democracy  the  world  ever  conceived  or  con- 
structed,*' one  begins  to  wonder  what  can  be  the 
stuff  of  Viscount  Harcourt 's  conception  of  democ- 
racy, or  what  democracy  can  make  of  Viscount 
Harcourt.  But  when  he  says,  as  he  also  did  some 
time  ago,  that  he  proposed  to  carry  the  flag  in 


36  ALL  AND  SUNDRY 

revolt  against  the  Jack-in-office,  it  seems  by  no 
means  so  incredible  that  he  may  again  be  in  touch 
with  popular  sentiment.  The  British  people  has 
no  passion  for  laissez  faire,  and  it  seems  (the  Gen- 
eral Election  verdict  notwithstanding)  to  have  a 
real,  if  vague,  aspiration  for  some  closer  approach 
to  democracy  than  the  constitution  which  Viscount 
Harcourt  lauds.  It  >«  not  in  the  mood  for  the  old 
political  game  of  whist;  it  wants  something  quite 
other  than  games  of  any  kind.  But  if  the  choice 
were  really  narrowed,  unfortunately,  to  two  things 
— ^the  Whig  roi  fainecmt,  and  the  pseudo-Socialist 
Jack  (or  Knave)  in  office — the  common  man  might 
very  well  choose  the  former  as  the  lesser  evil. 
With  the  last  shot  of  the  war  a  murmur  began  to 
be  heard;  the  discerning  perceived  it,  like  the 
tune  behind  the  rattle  of  a  railway  train,  in  the 
very  roar  of  the  Armistice;  and  the  feeling  behind 
that  murmur  is  destined  to  frustrate  many  fine 
schemes  to  Germanise  and  make  us  wise.  If  it 
is  heeded,  the  turn  of  Viscount  Harcourt  may 
never  come;  if  not,  it  will  not  be  the  first  time 
the  British  people  have  cried:  **Take  salaries, 
honours,  what  you  will,  so  long  as  you  spare  us 
from  being  really  ruled  by  you  or  the  like  of  you. ' ' 
It  was  experience  of  Castleteagh  and  his  friends 
after  Waterloo  that  made  almost  every  thinking 
Englishman  a  virtual  anarchist  for  half  a  century. 


VISCOUNT  HAECOURT  37 

just  as  anarchism  run  mad  in  its  turn  brought 
Socialism  into  fashion.  Herbert  Spencer  had  only- 
just  perfected  the  doctrine  of  universal  no-rule 
when  Viscount  Harcourt's  father  declared  **we  are 
all  Socialists  now.'' 

K  a  rebound  as  sudden  is  to  come,  men  like 
Viscount  Harcourt  would  have  one  advantage  not 
to  be  overlooked.  Politics  may  be  a  game  for 
such  as  he.  Or,  if  a  politer  terminology  be  pre- 
ferred, we  may  call  it  a  vocation.  It  is  not  strictly 
a  business.  Viscount  Harcourt  is  not  on  the 
make — not  looking,  as  some  politicians  are,  for  a 
few  thousands,  or,  like  others,  for  very  many 
millions.  He  is  too  rich  to  care  about  small  spoils, 
and  his  wealth  is  not  of  the  kind  that  seeks  per- 
petual expansion.  A  combination  of  poor  adven- 
turers and  monstrously  rich  business  men  might 
easily  drive  the  country  back  half  a  century,  and 
that  is  really  where  Viscount  Harcourt  belongs, 
despite  his  extremely  modern  externals.  It  is  but 
negative  praise  to  say  of  a  man  that  he  can  be 
trusted  with  the  key  of  the  national  safe.  But 
circumstances  are  imaginable  in  which  such  a 
recommendation  would  carry  great  weight;  and 
** business  government,''  which  has  been  so  busi- 
nesslike in  war  as  to  move  Auditors-General  to 
wail  over  millions  unaccounted  for,  has  still  to 
run  the  gauntlet  of  free  criticism  in  years  of  peace 


38  ALL  AND  SUNDEY 

— and  impoverishment.  Perhaps  Lord  Harconrt's 
time,  as  leader  of  the  revolt  against  the  Jack-in- 
office,  may  come  sooner  than  some  people  think. 
He  is  certainly  waiting  for  it  to  arrive. 


THE  BISHOP  OF  LONDON 

"When,  some  eighteen  years  ago,  Dr.  Ingram  was 
appointed  to  the  See  of  London,  it  was  expected 
that  he  would  become  an  influence.  Instead,  he 
has  developed  into  a  character. 

The  Right  Reverend  Arthur  Foley  Winnington 
Ingram,  then  Bishop  of  Stepney,  was  apparently 
regarded  as  a  sort  of  antidote  to  his  two  immediate 
predecessors.  Strongly  as  they  differed  in  every 
other  particular,  both  Temple  and  Creighton  were 
men  of  marked  intellectual  vigour.  Temple,  with 
his  harsh  and  masculine  common  sense,  his  rather 
repellent  manners,  and  his  wounding  satire, 
Creighton,  with  his  elegant  scholarship  and  worldly 
polish,  were  the  very  opposite  of  mystics.  They 
both  dominated  wherever  they  had  any  fancy 
for  domination.  Temple,  riding  on  an  omnibus 
and  munching  his  bun  in  a  tea-shop,  ruled  by 
power  of  character;  Creighton,  never  happier  than 
when  offering  men  of  all  worlds  cigarettes  fronj 
a  golden  case  and  epigrams  from  a  mind  as 
preciously  metallic,  ruled  by  power  of  tact.  But 
neither  of  them  gave  the  notion  of  having  any- 
thing specially  to  do  with  spiritual  things;  they 
were  managers  of  an  organisation  rather  than  the 

39 


40  ALL  AND  SUNDRY 

high-priests  of  a  religion.  To  the  one  London 
House  was  a  place  from  which  to  send  out  busi- 
ness letters,  to  the  other  a  place  from  which  to 
issue  invitations.  The  idea  behind  Dr.  Ingram's 
appointment  was  to  make  his  headquarters  some- 
thing quite  different.  It  was  to  become  a  sort  of 
spiritual  power-house,  whence  a  vitalising  current 
would  radiate  to  all  parts  of  the  enormous 
Bishopric. 

Nobody  looked  to  Dr.  Ingram  to  maintain  the 
tradition  of  profound  learning  and  shrewd  states- 
manship so  long  associated  with  the  See  of  London. 
His  parts,  it  is  true,  were  by  no  means  contempt- 
ible. But  he  was  more  the  earnest  priest  than 
the  scholar,  and  his  contributions  to  theological 
literature  savoured  on  the  whole  of  the  parish 
magazine.  It  was  on  the  spiritual  side  that  most 
was  expected  of  him.  He  was  young — ^not  much 
over  forty.  He  was  zealous.  He  had  a  great 
name  as  a  slum  worker,  and  it  was  a  time  when 
the  slum  was  forcing  itself  on  the  attention  of 
the  Church.  London  wanted  to  be  stirred  up.  It 
was  felt  necessary  to  *^do  something,"  as  the 
phrase  goes,  and  Dr.  Ingram  was  thought  the 
man  to  do  it.  His  warm  humanity,  it  was  hoped, 
would  effect  what  learning  and  courtliness  had 
failed  to  achieve.  He  might  really  contribute  to 
the  Christianisation  of  the  great  pagan  capital. 


THE  BISHOP  OF  LONDON  41 

How  far  these  hopes  have  been  realised  it  is  not 
for  the  present  writer  to  say.  Perhaps  the  warm- 
est admirers  of  the  Bishop  sometimes  feel  a 
certain  disappointment.  But  if  Dr.  Ingram  himself 
is  ever  conscious  of  unfulfilled  expectations  he 
never  shows  it.  He  is  as  sanguine  and  gay  now  as 
when  he  first  undertook  the  enormous  burden. 
The  cheerfulness  of  Dr.  Ingram  is  indeed  a  won- 
derful thing.  He  belongs  to  the  muscular  Christian 
school.  If  he  has  not  too  much  muscle  it  is  not 
his  fault;  his  intentions  are  of  the  best.  He  plays 
a  sort  of  football  match  with  the  powers  of  evil, 
and  is  never  happier  than  in  the  ** scrum.''  His 
cheery  **Well  played,  our  side,''  is — or  ought  to 
be — a  compensation  for  much.  He  believes  in  the 
slap  on  the  back  as  a  moral  stimulant.  It  smooths 
over  things  with  a  backsliding  costermonger.  It 
pricks  the  conscience  of  the  selfish  *^ swell."  It  is 
the  best  answer  to  the  ranting  atheist  lecturer,  who, 
the  Bishop  will  tell  interviewers  gravely,  ^*has 
really  quite  a  lot  of  good  in  him." 

If  some  Jean  Valjean  were  to  walk  off  with 
Dr.  Ingram's  candlesticks  he  would  doubtless  be 
admonished  by  a  slap  on  the  back;  whether  he 
would  be  transformed  by  it  into  a  virtuous  factory- 
owner  is  another  matter.  One  has  some  little 
doubt  of  the  general  efiicacy  of  the  method,  though 
none  concerning  the  excellence  of  the  practitioner. 


42  ALL  AND  SUNDRY 

One  wonders,  for  example,  whether  it  really  does 
help  the  Bishop  that  he  can  talk  to  the  inhabitants 
of  Bethnal  Green  *4n  their  own  slang."  For  their 
own  slang  is  their  own  language,  and  no  man  likes 
to  hear  his  own  language  treated  lightly  by  the 
alien;  was  it  not  annoying  to  have  the  late  German 
Crown  Prince  talking  of  ''playing  cricket"?  From 
the  East  End  point  of  view,  a  Bishop,  even  a 
Bishop  ''without  side,"  is  a  "toff" — that  is,  a 
foreigner — and  is  expected  to  use  his  own  tongue, 
or  at  least  to  talk  the  native  dialect  with  some- 
thing less  than  the  insolent  ease  of  a  native.  A 
Duke  would  certainly  resent  a  costermonger  talking 
to  him  in  a  Duke^s  slang;  and  the  costermonger, 
though  he  may  politely  conceal  the  fact  (for  there 
is  real  politeness  among  costermongers),  does  not 
like  having  his  own  sacred  speech  imitated.  Noble 
lords  who,  at  election  times,  address  a  working- 
class  audience  as  "old  pals,"  flatter  themselves 
on  their  finesse.  They  would  probably  be  quite 
surprised  to  know  that  the  liberty  is  resented,  just 
as  they  themselves  would  resent  their  own  tailors 
pushing  a  waistcoat  pattern  as  "top-hole"  or 
"priceless." 

In  short,  it  may  be  questioned  whether  the 
Bishop,  with  all  that  East  End  experience  behind 
him,  really  knows  much  that  is  fundamental  about 
the  London  workman,  or  understands  how  to  appeal 


THE  BISHOP  OF  LONDON  43 

either  to  his  humour  or  his  serious  side.  But  a 
conviction  to  the  contrary  sustains  the  Bishop, 
which  is  perhaps  the  main  thing.  His  astonishing 
vitality  is  no  doubt  the  direct  consequence  of  his 
painstaking  optimism.  **Take  one  day  at  a  time," 
he  said  once,  **and  trust  to  the  Holy  Spirit  to 
see  you  through.  That  is  the  basis  of  my  religion. 
It  keeps  me  bright  and  happy,  and  even  merry, 
every  day  of  my  life.''  This  spirit  he  carries  into 
everything;  and  with  its  aid  bears  up  surprisingly. 
*'I  have  often  taken  a  cup  of  coffee  with  him,*' 
he  said  of  a  great  theatre  manager.  ^*He  came  to 
cheer  me  up  in  the  middle  of  a  play."  It  is  an 
eloquent  testimony  to  the  Bishop  and  the  manager, 
if  a  little  cruel  to  the  play. 

Dr.  Ingram  has  been  condemned  by  the  Prot- 
estants as  too  Romanist  and  by  the  Ritualists 
as  too  Protestant.  This  does  not  mean  that  he 
has  no  views  of  his  own.  They  are  strong  and 
sincere,  but  after  all  he  has  sixteen  hundred  clergy 
to  look  after,  and  they  can't  all  think  the  same 
way.  The  main  thing  is  the  work.  While  there 
are  certain  definitely  evil  things  to  be  fought — 
drink,  social  uncleanness,  and  the  rest — argument 
about  the  finer  quillets  of  the  ecclesiastical  law 
may  wait;  and  besides  sins  to  be  fought  there  are 
dinners  to  be  attended,  meetings  to  be  addressed, 
Tower  Hill  crowds  to  be  harangued,  soldiers  to  be 


44  ALL  AND  SUNDRY 

slapped  on  the  back.  Solvitur  amhula%do.  It  is 
all  very  healthy,  manly,  common  sense,  and  earnest, 
going  well  with  the  Bishop's  golf  and  fives. 

Yet  it  must  be  very  hard  work,  keeping  up 
this  cheerful  sanity  every  day  of  the  week  and 
every  waking  hour  of  the  day.  Small  wonder  that 
the  Bishop's  face  sometimes  wears  an  almost 
pathetic  look  of  quiet  fatigue,  resembling  that  of 
a  ^'Do-it-Now''  millionaire.  Perhaps  after  a  cer- 
tain point  it  is  a  little  morbid  to  be  too  healthy. 
One  might  almost  go  farther,  and  wonder  whether 
the  whole  business  of  the  Bishopric  is  not  a  mis- 
take. Has  Dr.  Ingram  really  found  his  highest 
usefulness  in  rushing  from  one  activity  to  another, 
trying  to  be  shepherd,  and  watch-dog,  the  man  who 
cuts  up  the  turnips,  and  all  the  rest  of  the  estab- 
lishment in  one?  And  that  with  the  biggest  flock 
in  the  world?  Not  to  mention,  by  the  way,  the 
obligation  of  munching  with  the  flock  at  intervals, 
to  show  good  feeling?  The  main  task  of  rule,  in 
its  broadest  contours,  is  more  than  the  work  of 
one  man,  however  great.  How  can  any  one  indi- 
vidual, though  **fit''  as  Sandow,  fill  so  many  parts? 

Dr.  Ingram  may,  indeed,  be  really  only  one 
more  example  of  the  way  in  which  the  Estab- 
lished Church  fails  to  employ  good  material  to 
the  best  advantage.  Macaulay,  in  an  oft-quoted 
passage,  has  pointed  out  how  Rome  uses  the  uncul- 


THE  BISHOP  OF  LONDON  45 

tured  enthusiast  who  in  England  would  be  lost  to 
the  Church  and  leave  its  fold  to  set  up  another 
Bethel.  Home  ties  a  rope  round  her  Bunyans, 
and  sends  them  forth  to  preach  and  work  miracles 
in  her  name.  The  Church  of  England  politely 
points  out  that  they  have  no  Greek.  But  the 
criticism  goes  somewhat  deeper.  The  Church  as 
frequently  fails  to  make  the  most  of  the  well- 
bred,  highly  educated  enthusiasts  within  the  pale 
of  its  priesthood.  It  sets  a  bom  historian  to 
confirm  village  children,  and  a  bom  evangelist  to 
preach  to  the  clerk,  the  sexton  and  pew-opener. 
Has  it  made  this  sort  of  mistake  over  Dr.  Ingram? 

It  was  well,  no  doubt,  that  he  should  spend 
some  time  in  Bethnal  Green,  to  learn  what  one 
end  of  London  is  like.  But  his  true  business 
was  with  the  other  end.  If  the  East  End  is  to 
be  Christianised  it  must  be  by  a  poor  priesthood, 
who  need  not  **talk  to  the  people  in  their  own 
slang.*'  The  people  will  know  them  by  a  hundred 
signs,  however  they  talk.  And,  too,  if  the  West 
End  is  to  be  Christianised,  it  must  be  by  men  who 
know  their  slang,  their  sins,  and  their  own  not 
slight  sorrows  as  only  a  native  can. 

I  read  somewhere  that  the  Bishop  of  London 
in  his  own  person  is  **a  human  bridge  between 
Belgravia  and  Bethnal  Green.''  One  wonders 
whether  the  writer  knew  anything  of  either  place. 


46  ALL  AND  SUNDEY 

Such  a  bridge  can  only  be  built,  like  that  of  the 
Beresina,  on  multitudes  of  splendid  lives,  and  by 
any  sound  engineering  plan  the  work  must  proceed 
simultaneously  from  both  sides  of  the  chasm. 
The  Bishop's  side  is  clearly  Belgravia.  Is  his 
best  tool  the  crozier? 


SIB  ALFRED  MORITZ  MOND 

Sir  Alfred  Mond  sits  for  Swansea,  and  lias  done 
so  since  1910,  when  he  was  a  Radical  of  the  fieriest 
type.  There  is  a  story,  unhappily  apocryphal, 
that  on  his  introduction  to  this  constituency  he 
delivered  an  eloquent  speech  on  Welsh  National- 
ism, which  ended  on  the  ringing  note,  *^  Vales  for 
the  Vellsch.'*  The  undecorated  truth,  of  course, 
is  that  Sir  Alfred  suffers  only  in  the  faintest  degree 
from  what  was  described  in  the  days  of  the  late 
member  from  Darlington,  that  distinguished  Hun- 
garian patriot,  Mr.  Tribisch  Lincoln,  as  **the  Lin- 
coln handicap.''  He  speaks  the  King's  English, 
that  is  to  say,  as  some  earlier  English  kings  have 
spoken  it,  with  just  a  slight  thickening  of  certain 
consonants.  Otherwise,  vocally  and  in  other  ways, 
he  is  the  normal  product  of  such  a  school  as 
Cheltenham  and  such  a  college  as  John's.  He  is 
just  as  English  as  (say)  the  Rothschilds. 

But,  while  the  story  is  not  true,  one  feels  some- 
how that  it  ought  to  be.  For  enthusiasm  in  a 
national  cause  not  one's  own  is  the  last  infirmity 
of  cosmopolitan  minds,  and  Sir  Alfred  Mond, 
though  Lancashire  born  and  bull-dog  bred,  is  of 
the    cosmopolitan    type.     It    is    not    merely    that 

47 


48  ALL  AND  SUNDRY 

he  is  the  son  of  a  very  eminent  German  chemist, 
who  came  to  this  country  in  the  middle  of  Queen 
Victoria's  reign  and  founded  the  great  and  smelly 
industry  of  which  every  traveller  to  Liverpool  by 
the  North- Western  Railway  is  painfully  aware 
shortly  after  he  leaves  Crewe.  Had  Ludwig  Mond 
come  of  the  purest  North  Country  stock  he  could 
not  have  been,  by  modem  standards,  a  greater 
benefactor  to  Great  Britain;  the  works  of  Widnes 
have  been  an  immense  source  of  national  wealth, 
and  have  only  blasted  country  which  was  pretty 
hopeless  before.  Dr.  Mond  was  a  calm  man  of 
science,  belonging  to  the  rather  detached  Germany 
of  the  pre-Empire  period;  he  identified  himself 
heartily  with  his  adopted  country;  and  in  his 
public  munificence  he  showed  an  example  to  native- 
born  millionaires  which  on  the  whole  they  have 
been  rather  slow  to  follow. 

The  war  laid  so  much  stress  on  a  particular 
aspect  of  the  German  that  we  are  apt  to  overlook 
the  fact  that  until  quite  lately  he  was  the  most 
easily  absorbed  of  all  foreigners.  We  are  further 
prone  to  forget  that  the  invasion  of  our  politics 
by  the  sons  of  newcomers  is  no  novel  thing.  They 
have  not  only  allied  themselves  with  our  parties, 
but  have  even  shown  a  special  tendency  to  adopt 
as  their  own  the  bitterest  and  most  recondite  of 
our  insular  vendettas.    Thirty  years  ago  nobody 


SIR  ALFRED  MORITZ  MOND  49 

thought  of  examining  with  jealous  scrutiny  the 
family  trees  of  the  Mundellas,  Herschells,  Goschens, 
or  Laboucheres,  and  in  honouring  Benjamin  Dis- 
raeli honest  English  squires  almost  believed  that 
they  were  honouring  themselves  as  the  class  that 
produced  him.  We  may  therefore  disregard  as 
unphilosophical  the  kind  of  prejudice  which  de- 
lights in  laying  emphasis  on  the  ^^Moritz*'  and  in 
pointing  out  that  the  maiden  name  of  Lady  Mond, 
the  grand-daughter  of  John  Bentley,  was  Goetze. 
It  is  not  his  father's  blood,  but  other  things  inher- 
ited from  his  father,  that  make  reasonable  men 
regard  Sir  Alfred,  as  a  politician,  with  a  certain 
strained  attention. 

This  feeling,  by  whatever  name  one  cares  to  call 
it,  does  not  apply  to  Sir  Alfred  Mond  as  an  indi- 
vidual. As  a  human  being  he  is  perhaps  more 
attractive  than  most  very  rich  men.  For  if  he 
sometimes  talks  humbug,  it  is  humbug  so  rich  as 
to  be  inoffensive,  like  the  boasting  of  a  Gascon 
or  the  lying  of  a  Maltese.  Nobody  can  be  seriously 
annoyed  with  Sir  Alfred  Mond  in  the  character 
of  the  hot-blooded  Celt,  or  resent  his  Noncon- 
formist zeal  for  the  disestablishment  of  the  Church 
in  Wales;  one  is  rather  grateful  for  the  importa- 
tion of  a  little  fun  without  vulgarity  into  the  dull 
world  of  politics.  Besides,  he  is  not  a  philan- 
thropist of  the  modem  kind,  or  at  any  rate  refrains 


50  ALL  AND  SUNDEY 

from  talking  like  one,  which  is  the  next  best  thing. 
He  has  no  passion  for  free  libraries  or  model 
villages  of  bondsmen.  He  has  argued  about  Free 
Trade  without  cant,  and  about  Germany  without 
vindictiveness  or  sentiment.  He  has  shown,  as 
First  Commissioner  of  Works,  considerable  admin- 
istrative ability,  such  as  one  would  expect  from  a 
man  of  his  great  business  experience  and  rather 
wide  culture.  He  has  a  discriminating  taste  in  art, 
and  a  gift  of  hospitality.  In  short,  he  is  able  in  his 
way,  good-natured  in  his  way,  and  not  insincere  in 
his  way;  and  he  is  well  liked  by  those  who  like 
him,  including  a  good  many  literary  and  artistic 
people  whom  he  has  befriended  in  a,  careless  and 
unostentatious  way. 

It  is  simply  because  he  is  a  rather  flamboyant 
specimen  of  a  certain  class  of  very  rich  men  that 
Sir  Alfred  Mond  compels  this  watchfulness  to 
which  reference  has  been  made.  The  British  people 
are  familiar  enough  with  the  spectacle  of  wealth 
in  power.  The  history  of  British  domestic  politics 
has  been  little  more  than  the  record  of  the  selfish- 
ness of  the  great  landlords,  the  great  bankers,  the 
great  brewers,  the  great  ship-owners,  the  great 
traders,  and  the  great  manufacturers.  But  in 
times  less  complex  there  was  at  least  the  safe- 
guard of  nationality.  The  wealth  was  English 
wealth;  a  Duke  might  be  an  oppressive  landlord, 


SIR  ALFRED  MORITZ  MOND  51 

but  he  was  likely  to  be,  according  to  his  lights,  an 
excellent  Briton,  for  the  simple  reason  (if  no 
other  existed)  that  patriotism  paid;  if  the  country- 
went  down  he  went  down  also.  The  typical  rich 
man  of  to-day  is,  on  the  other  hand,  cosmopolitan, 
though  he  may  have  a  pedigree  as  purely  **  Anglo- 
Saxon''  as  that  of  Wamba  the  son  of  Witless, 
whose  grandfather  was  an  Alderman.  The  high 
tariff  policies  of  most  modern  States  have  hastened 
a  process  which  was  probably  inevitable,  given 
free  play  to  capitalistic  enterprise.  An  English 
concern,  finding  itself  excluded  from  a  foreign 
market,  naturally  sought  to  evade  the  restriction, 
and  found  the  solution  in  the  formation  of  a 
foreign  company  in  which  it  acquired  an  interest. 
Hence  in  due  course  the  extraordinary  network 
of  more  or  less  closely  associated  enterprises 
which  puzzled  and  shocked  British  patriots  during 
the  war,  and  probably  gave  equal  concern  to  Ger- 
man patriots. 

Such  allied  enterprises  naturally  cover  a  field 
of  operations  that  would  be  impracticable  for  a 
single  partnership  or  company,  however  large.  It 
is  the  difference  between  the  growth  of  a  mammal 
and  the  growth  of  a  sponge;  the  lower  the  organ- 
ism, the  less  soul  it  possesses,  the  more  rapid  its 
multiplication.  We  arrive  at  last  at  something  of 
which  the  older  economists,  whose  notions  were 


62  ALL  AND  SUNDEY 

coloured  with  the  illusion  that  there  must  be  a 
strict  limit  to  the  size  of  any  enterprise,  never 
dreamed.  They  were  in  the  position  of  a  botanist 
who  knew  nothing  of  vegetable  life  outside  of 
Europe,  and  could  imagine  no  other  conditions. 
He  might  reasonably  argue  that  no  tree  could  be 
very  much  bigger  than  an  oak  or  beech,  because 
the  force  of  the  wind  must  assign  a  limit  to  mere 
height;  it  would  never  strike  him  that  there  could 
be  a  tree  like  the  banyan,  of  which  one  specimen 
would  make  a  grove.  Modern  cosmopolitan  finance 
follows  the  rule  of  the  banyan  rather  than  the  oak. 
It  is  not  one  stem  rising  to  a  great  and  conspicu- 
ous height,  but  a  forest  in  which  all  the  stems  seem 
separate,  but  are  really  connected  with  the  parent 
tree.  And  just  as  it  is  by  no  means  easy  to  dis- 
tinguish in  a  banyan  grove  which  is  the  parent  tree, 
so  it  is  hard  for  the  ordinary  man  to  tell  what 
influence  is  really  behind  any  particular  aggrega- 
tion of  capital. 

A  park  is  given  to  London  and  somebody  in 
politics  becomes  mysteriously  well-to-do.  At  about 
the  same  time  a  concession  is  made  to  a  great 
firm  in  an  out-of-the-way  part  of  the  world.  Sher- 
lock Holmes  himself  could  scarcely  trace  a  connec- 
tion between  the  two  sets  of  events,  and  yet  a 
connection  there  may  very  well  be.  It  seems  im- 
possible to  a  newspaper  reader  in  London  that  the 


SIR  ALFRED  MORITZ  MOND  53 

opinions  he  reads  in  vigorous  vernacular  can  be 
dictated  by  an  Americanised  Hungarian  in  Chi- 
cago or  a  German  steel-founder  on  the  Rhine;  yet 
there  is  no  reason  why  it  should  not  be  so.  It 
seems  fanciful  to  suppose  that  a  member  of  the 
House  of  Commons,  with  perhaps  an  ancient  Scot- 
tish name,  may  be  the  mere  spy  and  factotum  of  a 
Continental  kartel;  yet  the  easy  success  in  our 
politics  of  pure  foreigners  whose  bad  faith  has 
been  exposed  suggests  that  stranger  things  might 
happen. 

Sir  Alfred  Mond  has  not  escaped  a  natural 
jealousy  against  the  concentration  of  all  kinds 
of  power  into  one  pair  of  hands,  and  those  a  very 
capable  pair.  The  same  kind  of  jealousy  was  felt 
when  a  certain  colossus  of  wealth  went  into  poli- 
tics; it  long  kept  him  out  of  ofifice,  and  it  was 
not  entirely  quieted  by  his  moderate  use  of  power. 
The  same  sort  of  jealousy  would  pursue,  say.  Lord 
Leverhulme,  the  Rothschilds,  and  the  Samuels,  if 
they  took  to  publishing  newspapers  and  organising 
House  of  Commons  cliques. 

Sir  Alfred  Mond  would  pass  unnoticed  if  he 
were  simply  a  great  landlord  seeking  a  Garter, 
or  a  mere  man  of  wealth  after  a  barony.  But  he 
is  more  than  that.  He  is  a  very  pushful  and 
skilful  hand  at  the  political  game,  working  for  the 
most  part  behind  the  scenes,  and  fully  alive  to 


54  ALL  AND  SUNDEY 

the  importance  of  the  newspaper  as  a  weapon. 
He  is  immensely  rich,  acute,  cynical,  and  probably 
knows  quite  well  what  he  wants;  and  he  occupies 
a  subordinate  position  in  a  Government  which 
includes  poor  men,  men  easily  flattered,  men  ex- 
ceedingly puzzle-headed,  and  men  by  their  records 
not  specially  scrupulous. 

Is  it  wonderful  that  the  spectacle  is  slightly 
perturbing  to  many  Britons?  They  would  be  quite 
comfortable  with  a  multi-millionaire  who  was  also 
an  obvious  ninny.  But  it  is  just  the  combination 
of  great  wealth,  great  ability,  and  apparent  humil- 
ity which  makes  Mr.  Lloyd  George's  bevy  of  mil- 
lionaire subordinates  so  questionable  to  the  ordi- 
nary man.  The  ordinary  man  is  probably  quite 
wrong.  All  of  us  have  much  of  the  child  in  us, 
and  there  is  no  real  reason  why  quite  minor  office 
should  not  appeal  to  a  man  with  Sir  Alfred  Mond's 
vast  possessions  and  wide  influence  in  other  direc- 
tions. But  the  interest  of  him  and  his  like  in 
politics  will  always  evoke  a  popular  note  of 
interrogation. 


GEORGES  CLEMENCEAU 

Every  artist  who  has  caricatured  Georges  Eugene 
Benjamin  Clemenceau  has  laid  stress  on  the 
Mongolian  suggestion  in  his  strong  features:  a 
suggestion  that  has  grown  more  pronounced  with 
every  year  of  his  later  life.  M.  Clemenceau 
springs  from  La  Vendee,  of  a  family  of  small 
landowners,  with  a  taste  for  politics  and  doctor- 
ing; and  there  are  ethnologists  who  hold  that  the 
Vendeans,  like  some  other  races  of  the  extreme 
West,  have  more  than  a  suspicion  of  Oriental 
blood.  Be  the  fact  as  it  may — and  we  are  begin- 
ning to  shake  ourselves  free  of  some  of  the  grosser 
superstitions  concerning  race — it  is  not  without 
a  reason  that  so  many  observers  have  laid  em- 
phasis on  the  same  point.  In  representing  M. 
Clemenceau  as  a  Kalmuck,  or  even  a  cave-man, 
the  satirist  has  only  distorted  a  truth.  For,  while 
the  great  Frenchman  is  very  French  and  very 
civilised,  the  prime  fact  about  him  is  something 
not  specially  French  and  still  less  specially  civ- 
ilised. It  is  something,  indeed,  that  civilisation 
tends  to  weaken — the  instinct  to  know  an  enemy  at 
sight  and  the  will  to  sacrifice  everything  to  his 
destruction. 

65 


56  ALL  AND  SUNDRY 

Clemenceau  is  a  great  man  to-day  by  virtue, 
not  of  his  intellect,  though  it  is  vigorous,  nor  of 
his  learning,  though  it  is  considerable,  nor  of  his 
industry,  though  it  is  immense;  but  of  a  quality 
which  Herbert  Spencer  years  ago  derided  as 
characteristically  barbaric,  if  not  brutish:  that 
tenacity  in  conflict  which  regards  every  evil  as 
nothing  compared  with  surrender.  The  elaborate 
sarcasm  of' the  Victorian  philosopher  looks  foolish 
enough  in  the  light  of  war  experience;  in  superi- 
ority to  merely  physical  evils  the  most  civilised 
races  have  shown  themselves  the  most  stoical; 
and  it  is  clearly  a  calumny  to  say  that  *^game- 
ness'*  in  polished  mankind  is  only  a  pale  reflection 
of  the  same  virtue  in  the  savage  or  the  wild 
animal.  But  of  the  moral  hardihood  that  shrinks 
from  no  load  of  responsibility,  and  is  willing  to 
put  all  to  the  hazard,  there  have  been  far  fewer 
examples;  in  that  regard  there  does  seem,  in  all 
countries,  some  declension  from  the  old  standard. 
Were  the  case  otherwise,  it  is  certain  that  Georges 
Clemenceau  would  not  be  mentioned  in  French 
official  records  as  having  **  deserved  well  of  his 
country. ' ' 

For,  in  truth,  when  Clemenceau,  at  the  age 
of  seventy-six,  took  charge  of  the  fortunes  of  the 
French  Republic  and  People,  the  choice  was  limited 
to    one.     Not    that    France   lacked   talent.    There 


GEORGES  CLEMENCEAU  57 

was  plenty  of  eloquence,  wit,  business  ability,  tech- 
nical capacity.  But  there  was  no  mastery,  and  the 
supreme  need  at  that  moment  was  the  voice,  the 
hand,  and  even  the  whip  of  a  master.  It  was  a 
terrible  moment.  That  splendid  stoicism  with 
which  the  French  had  supported  the  strain  of 
three  dreadful  years  was  being  fast  undermined 
by  dissension  and  intrigue.  **  Treason  and  half- 
treason,'^  to  use  Clemenceau's  expression,  were 
active.  Russia  had  fallen  out;  America  had  not 
come  in ;  all  France  was  full  of  whisperings  against 
the  British.  The  ** sacred  union'*  had  become  only 
a  phrase;  creeping  things  which  had  so  far  done 
their  foul  work  in  secret  now  almost  emerged,  with 
a  sense  of  safety  and  accomplished  purpose,  into 
the  light.  It  seemed  beyond  the  power  of  a  young 
Napoleon  to  restore  the  tone  necessary  for  en- 
durance to  the  end;  and  now,  by  a  tragic  irony, 
the  task  devolved  on  an  ancient  politician  whose 
sole  reputation  had  been  that  of  a  destroyer. 
The  man  who  was  to  heal  dissensions  was  he  who 
had  spent  his  life  in  breeding  them. 

**We  are  swimming  in  a  sea  of  incoherence,'' 
said  M.  Clemenceau  genially  when  attacked  for 
some  now  forgotten  inconsistency.  Superficially 
regarded,  indeed,  no  man's  political  record  could 
present  less  appearance  of  unity.  He  had  been 
a  Boulangist  and  an  anti-Boulangist;  he  had  de- 


58  ALL  AND  SUNDEY 

nounced  Dreyfus  as  a  traitor  and  pleaded  for  him 
as  a  martyr;  lie  had  opposed  Colonial  expansion, 
and  added  to  France's  Colonial  commitments;  he 
had  declaimed  against  State  interference  in  in- 
dustrial disputes,  and  had  himself  called  out  horse, 
foot,  and  artillery  to  overawe  strikers.  He  had 
attacked  every  French  statesman  of  his  time  always 
with  violence  and  sometimes  with  injustice.  He 
bore,  in  short,  very  much  the  sort  of  reputation  the 
late  Henry  Labouchere  achieved  in  British  politics. 
He  was  an  Ishmaelite,  with  a  sharp  tongue,  a  still 
sharper  pen,  and  a  duelling  sword  as  ready  and 
trenchant  as  either. 

But  beneath  this  surface  of  the  cynical  boule- 
vardier  carrying  ''blague''  and  ''je  m'en  fiche''  to 
extremity,  there  was  always  something  very  strong 
and  real.  Clemenceau  has  never  ceased  to  be 
two  things — a  Republican  and  free-thought  demo- 
crat and  a  French  patriot.  Like  his  father,  who 
was  imprisoned  by  Napoleon,  he  represents  athe- 
istic Republicanism  against  all  kinds  of  kings  and 
all  kinds  of  priests.  He  is  really  no  more  *^of  the 
people"  than  an  English  squire,  but  he  is  most 
truly  of  the  Revolution,  and,  after  the  manner  of 
his  countrymen,  he  knows  no  compromise:  to  see 
a  head  is  to  hit  it.  And  he  has  been  seeing  one 
head — adorned  with  a  pickelhaube — ever  since  1870. 
The  aged  politician  of  1917  felt  exactly  as  did  the 


GEORGES  CLEMENCEAU  59 

young  doctor  of  forty-six  years  earlier  who  was 
for  fighting  to  the  end,  come  what  might.  Su- 
premely irreverent  as  regards  many  Frenchmen, 
he  knew,  loved,  and  trusted  France.  He  might 
even  hate  some  Frenchmen  with  all  the  legendary 
professor's  bitterness  for  a  rival  theory  of  irreg- 
ular verbs;  but  in  remembering  them  he  never 
forgot  the  enemy.  Once  we  hold  the  main  clues 
to  Clemenceau's  action,  his  distrust  of  Rome  and 
his  fear  of  Potsdam,  **The  Tiger''  ceases  to  be  a 
mere  instinctive  man-eater,  with  no  better  motive 
than  love  of  carnage.  In  any  case,  the  jungle  was 
not  ours,  and  judgment  is  for  his  own  country- 
men. Moreover,  as  M.  Clemenceau  himself  has 
said,  **A11  that  is  of  the  past,  and  matters  now 
not  at  all." 

What  did  matter  in  that  dismal  winter  of  1917 
was  that  the  boundless  audacity  of  the  old 
Frondeur  never  faltered.  An  almost  gay  confi- 
dence mingled  with  the  cool  intrepidity  of  the 
veteran  duellist.  Clemenceau  probably  never  had 
a  suspicion  of  being  a  hero;  heroism  seemed  to 
him  merely  the  hardest  common  sense:  a  patriot 
defending  the  Fatherland  was  only  on  a  bigger 
scale  the  cave-man  defending  his  cave — ^it  mattered 
nothing  that  he  knew  logarithms  and  the  Latin 
names  of  his  bones  and  emotions,  and  other 
things  undreamed  of  in  the  cave-man's  philosophy. 


60  ALL  AND  SUNDEY 

**My  policy — it  is  victory'' — ^like  the  cave-man's. 
*'Home  politics?  I  wage  war.  Foreign  politics? 
I  wage  war.  Russia  betrays  us?  I  continue  to 
wage  war.  We  will  fight  before  Paris;  we  will 
fight  behind  Paris;  we  will  fight,  if  necessary,  to 
the  Pyrenees.  I  will  continue  till  the  very  last 
quarter  of  an  hour,  because  the  last  quarter  of 
an  hour  will  be  ours." 

It  was  this  gigantic  simplicity  that  gave  Clemen- 
ceau  his  power.  Other  men  had  many  objects; 
he  had  but  one — ^victory.  Other  men  had  many 
enemies  and  (still  worse)  many  friends;  Clemen- 
ceau,  the  connoisseur  in  quarrels,  knew  no  enemy 
but  Germany,  and  no  friend  but  any  tool  against 
Germany.  One  tool  there  was  that  lay  idle:  a 
certain  devout  Catholic  named  Foch;  and  him 
the  rabid  free-thinker  brought  back  to  his  job, 
enormously  enlarged,  because  he  happened  to  be 
(besides  a  pupil  of  the  priests)  the  greatest  soldier 
of  his  age. 

What  Foch  did,  will  it  not  be  written  in  many 
ponderous  tomes?  But  the  best  part  of  what 
Clemenceau  did  can  hardly  be  written;  for  we  are 
here  in  the  region  of  things  quite  incalculable,  as 
potent  as  light  or  music,  and  as  imponderable. 
It  would  be  as  easy  to  attempt  to  express  in  foot- 
pounds the  dawn,  or  the  martial  strain  that  gives 
new  life  to  fainting  men. 


MR.  JOHN  BURNS 

RoMNEY,  the  painter,  married  at  an  early  age  a 
young  woman  of  his  own  class.  Leaving  her,  he 
went  to  London,  made  money  and  a  name,  was 
courted  and  caressed,  had  Lady  Hamilton  as  model 
and  all  the  grandees  as  sitters.  At  last,  stricken 
in  years,  l)roken  in  fortune,  ill,  weary,  disillusioned, 
he  bethought  himself  of  the  long-neglected  wife  in 
Westmoreland,  and  returned  to  be  forgiven  and 
nursed  for  the  short  remainder  of  his  life. 

A  somewhat  similar  reconciliation  took  place 
just  before  the  General  Election  of  1918  between 
the  Right  Honourable  John  Burns  and  the  Labour 
party.  There  was  perhaps  never  a  formal  breach 
between  them.  But  undeniably  the  Right  Honour- 
able John  was  a  very  different  person  from  the 
John  Burns  of  Trafalgar  Square  and  Tower  Hill 
and  of  the  ** Dockers'  Tanner"  strike.  Mr.  Burns, 
it  is  true,  was  at  no  time  a  Labour  Member,  but 
a  Radical,  or,  to  use  the  jargon  of  a  few  years 
past,  a  **Lib.-Lab."  Even  in  his  unofficial  days 
the  line  of  distinction  between  him  and  people 
like  the  late  Mr.  Keir  Hardie  was  of  the  sharpest; 
and  when  he  became  a  Minister  he  was  of  all 
Ministers  the  most  ministerial.     No  man  showed 

61 


62  ALL  AND  SUNDEY 

more  delight  in  the  mere  fiddle-faddle  and  para- 
phernalia of  office.  It  was  a  joy  to  him  to  sit  in 
great  official  armchairs,  to  warm  his  back  at  gen- 
erous Circumlocution  fireplaces,  to  get  into  a 
Windsor  uniform,  or  to  pervade  his  favourite  club 
with  an  air  of  having  two  draft  Bills  and  a  new 
treaty  in  his  reefer-jacket  pockets.  Certain  fellow- 
members  of  some  small  distinction  still  tell  with 
an  enormous  relish  how  John  Burns,  once  to  them 
'^familiar  as  his  garter,"  gradually  broke  off 
intimacy  from  the  moment  of  his  elevation,  until 
at  last  the  great  man  came  to  eye  them  with  the 
genuinely  puzzled  look  of  one  who  asks,  **  Where 
have  I  seen  that  manT' 

Li  the  same  tactful  way  the  late  President  of  the 
Local  Government  Board  gradually  shook  himself 
free  of  his  former  comrades  of  the  Social  Demo- 
cratic Federation.  Nobody  could  accuse  him 
exactly  of  '*  spurning  the  base  degrees  by  which 
he  did  ascend' '  to  the  perfection  of  bourgeois 
respectability  and  bureaucratic  correctitude.  He 
simply  left  them  behind,  like  the  houses  which 
successively  proved  inadequate  for  his  growing 
fortunes,  not  scornfully  or  unkindly,  with  some 
sentimental  regrets  perhaps,  but  most  decisively 
all  the  same.  If  Mr.  Burns  were  an  egotist  on 
only  a  slightly  smaller  scale,  it  might  be  possible 
that    some    few    finishing    strokes    were    needed, 


MR.  JOHN  BURNS  63 

otherwise  why  pay  the  strict  trade  union  wage 
of  a  Minister  to  Mr.  Bums?  But  with  a  ** com- 
munity of  interest/'  and  ^* unity  of  endeavour/*  a 
**  spontaneity  of  effort/'  an  *  identity  of  action," 
and  various  other  vague  polysyllabic  things,  all 
would  be  well,  provided  Battersea  kept  faithful 
to  Mr.  Burns,  and  Mr.  Burns  remained  at  White- 
hall. 

Probably  but  for  the  war  Mr.  Burns  would  have 
remained  at  Whitehall  so  long  as  a  Liberal  Prime 
Minister  kept  house  in  Downing  street.  For  he 
was  strongly  entrenched.  His  strength,  it  is 
true,  was  not  precisely  in  the  esteem  of  his  col- 
leagues. Some  regarded  him  with  no  great  rev- 
erence as  a  business  Minister,  and  others  objected 
to  him  as  a  singularly  obstinate  reactionary. 
Others,  again,  unjustly  looked  on  him  as  a  mere 
careerist.  It  is  notorious  that  he  did  not  **get 
on''  with  Mr.  Lloyd  George.  It  is  equally  certain 
that  Mr.  Asquith  did  not  get  on  with  him.  Mr. 
Asquith  was  the  most  tolerant  of  men  in  many 
important  things.  He  permitted  a  quite  dangerous 
liberty  to  some  of  his  subordinates.  He  freely 
forgave  grave  disloyalty  in  others  of  his  followers. 
But  two  things  he  could  hardly  pardon.  One  was 
Mr.  Burns 's  taste  for  robust  English.  The  other 
was  Mr.  Bums's  weakness  for  elementary  Latin. 
The  first  false  quantity  sealed  Mr.  Burns 's  fate  in 


64  ALL  AND  SUNDRY 

that  quarter,  and  it  may  be  surmised  that  the  only 
** bright  spot"  for  Mr.  Asquith  when  war  was 
declared  was  not  Ireland,  but  the  vacant  Board  of 
Trade. 

Still,  Mr.  Bums  would  have  no  doubt  endured 
— such  is  the  force  of  legend  in  a  sceptical  age — 
but  for  the  war.  Here  was  a  living  romance,  a 
** Labour"  man  who  had  climbed  without  assist- 
ance from  two  pounds  a  week  to  five  thousand  a 
year;  could  he  be  anything  but  a  success?  To 
declare  otherwise  would  be  to  shatter  the  very 
foundations  of  the  faith  delivered  by  Dr.  Samuel 
Smiles,  and  no  Eadical  Prime  Minister  dare  figure 
in  a  character  so  iconoclastic.  It  remained  for 
the  Germans  to  shatter  the  Burns  myth,  or,  to 
put  the  matter  more  accurately,  to  leave  it  with 
one  solitary  believer — Mr.  Burns  himself.  It  is 
idle  to  discuss,  on  such  knowledge  as  we  have, 
the  motives  that  led  Mr.  Burns  to  accompany  Lord 
Morley  and  Mr.  Trevelyan  into  retirement.  They 
were  no  doubt  perfectly  sincere,  though  it  is 
difficult  to  envisage  as  a  typical  pacifist  the  man 
who  was  so  fond  of  soldiers,  and  who  has  so 
often  used  his  fists  to  enforce  an  argument.  It  is 
true,  also,  that  on  August  3,  1914,  we  did  not  know 
all  we  know  now.  But  the  fact  remains  that  from 
the  one  really  popular  decision  since  the  Restora- 
tion Mr.  Bums,  who  owed  his  whole  position  to  a 


MR.  JOHN  BURNS  65 

popular  delusion,  dissented.  The  nation  guessed 
right;  Mr.  Burns  guessed  wrong;  and  August  3, 
1914,  witnessed  his  political  death. 

The  rest  may  be  interesting,  from  a  psychical 
research  standpoint,  but  is  of  little  practical 
importance*  Mr.  Bums  may  come  back  into 
politics,  but  only  in  the  French  sense  of  ^'reve- 
nant.'^  His  latter  appearances  at  Westminster 
showed  all  the  quality  of  spectral  phenomena. 
He  pervaded  the  Lobbies  and  smoke-rooms,  a 
white-bearded  and  white-haired  figure,  breathing 
to  living  humanity  the  message,  **I  have  been.'' 
He  sometimes  showed  soldiers  round  the  Chambers ; 
occasionally  he  spoke  in  a  House  that  listened 
to  him  with  a  queer  kind  of  awe  as  to  a  visitant 
from  another  world.  And,  indeed,  he  is  just  that. 
John  Bums  is  not  only  a  ghost;  he  is  a  very  old- 
fashioned  ghost,  as  old-fashioned  as  the  bad  baronet 
with  ruffles  and  rapier.  The  world  he  belonged  to 
may  have  been  a  good  world  or  a  bad,  but  it  has 
vanished  as  utterly  as  the  French  monarchy.  John 
Burns 's  memoirs  are  understood  to  be  coveted  by 
a  dozen  publishers,  and  they  may  be  really  valuable 
specimens  of  the  ** Under  Four  Reigns''  genre. 
But  for  any  topical  interest  they  should  have  been 
published  when  the  author  was  still  politically 
alive. 

Such  is  the  man  who,  four  years  after  his  re- 


66  ALL  AND  SUNDEY 

tirement  from  office  and  just  before  his  retirement 
from  Parliament,  came  back  to  the  Labour  fold. 
Li  present-day  politics  we  are  not  accustomed  to 
look  for  pure  philanthropy,  and  it  must  be  assumed 
that  if  the  leaders  of  the  Labour  party  welcomed 
Mr.  Burns  it  was  in  the  expectation  that  he  would 
prove  not  an  encumbrance,  but  a  paying  guest. 
Doubts  may  be  entertained  as  to  the  quality  of 
the  bargain.  It  is  not  the  old  men  who  remember 
Mr.  Burns  as  a  democratic  fighter  who  will  con- 
trol the  Labour  movement  of  the  future.  It  is 
the  young  men,  who  will  remember  him  only  as 
the  middle-class  politician  who  would  neither  give 
his  vote  for  fighting  nor  his  arm  for  working. 
One  mistake,  though  a  capital  one,  might  have 
been  forgiven  Mr.  Burns.  What  is  neither  for- 
gotten nor  forgiven  is  the  success  with  which  the 
most  garrulous  of  men  kept  silent  and  the  most 
restless  of  men  remained  inactive  through  four 
years  big  with  fate.  That  memory  goes  far — 
perhaps  too  far — to  obscure  the  real  worth  of 
John  Bums,  as  London  citizen  and  friend  of  the 
under-dog,  in  the  days  when  Battersea  was  very 
near  to  him  and  Whitehall  very  distant. 


MR.   G.   K.   CHESTERTON 

Me.  Chesterton,  as  a  jesting  philosopher,  suffers 
one  considerable  disadvantage.  Serious  people 
tend  to  like  his  jokes  and  distrust  his  philosophy. 
Flippant  people  are  willing  to  respect  his  philos- 
ophy at  a  distance,  but  refuse  to  be  amused  by 
his  pleasantries. 

There  is  a  highly  intellectual  set  of  men — their 
view  is  expressed  by  Mr.  A.  Gr.  Gardiner — ^who 
will  not  have  Mr.  Chesterton  as  a  thinker,  but 
roar  their  sides  out  when  he  makes  a  pun.  They 
insist  on  treating  him  simply  as  an  embodied, 
even  over-embodied,  jest,  as  **your  only  jig-maker,'' 
a  ** Thousand  Best  Things,''  bound,  like  the  books 
of  Meudon,  in  human  skin.  On  the  other  hand, 
the  professional  merry-makers  find  little  amuse- 
ment in  Mr.  Chesterton.  Mr.  Chesterton  and  Mr. 
Cadbury  parted.  Mr  Chesterton  and  Sir  Owen 
Seaman  have  apparently  never  met.  The  greatest 
joke  of  the  age  is  never  seen  in  Punch. 

It  is,  I  suppose,  Mr.  Chesterton's  own  fault 
that  he  is  so  generally  conceived  as  a  chuckle, 
et  prcBterea  parvwm.  He  has  made  himself,  or 
allowed  himself  to  become,  too  much  of  a  char- 
acter. There  was  a  time  when  he  sat  on  a  high- 
er 


68  ALL  AND  SUNDRY 

legged  stool,  in  a  City  office,  doing  something  with 
invoices.  It  is  true  he  did  not  stay  there  long, 
but  his  mere  presence  for  the  fraction  of  a  day 
would  seem  proof  that  at  one  time  he  was  thought 
commercially  possible,  capable  of  being  made  some 
sort  of  a  clerk.  That  is  to  say,  he  must  have 
presented  some  outward  resemblance  to  other 
youths;  from  Aldgate  Pump  to  St.  Paul's  Church- 
yard no  firm  exists  wide-minded  enough  to  admit 
a  recruit  with  the  vast  sombrero,  the  Samsonian 
locks,  and  the  Bolivar-poncho  cloak  which  at  a 
later  period  were  the  honest  pride  of  Fleet  Street, 
still  revelling,  though  grown  prim  itself,  in  the 
reputation  of  Bohemianism.  Whether  Mr.  Ches- 
terton, of  fixed  purpose,  adopted  the  dress  and 
mannerisms  of  his  earlier  period,  or  whether  it 
was  all  more  or  less  an  accident,  only  Mr.  Ches- 
terton may  say.  But  in  permitting  himself  to 
become  an  oddity  he  threw  away  much  of  his  birth- 
right as  an  influence. 

The  fault  is,  of  course,  the  time's  as  well  as 
Mr.  Chesterton's.  Socrates  was  joked  at  as  much 
as  Mr.  Chesterton,  but  Socrates  was  no  joke. 
Many  a  saint  must  have  raised  a  coarse  laugh  by 
his  appearance,  but  no  saint  was  ever  a  laughing 
matter.  Yet  we  modems,  with  our  mania  for 
specialism,  will  hardly  allow  Jack  Point  to  have 
a  soul  to  save  or  a  tooth  to  ache.    If  accepted  as 


MR.  G.  K.  CHESTERTON  69 

an  authentic  funny  man,  he  must  be  funny  for 
ever.  The  mere  fact  about  Mr.  Chesterton  is  that 
he  is  a  big  man,  who  dresses  as  he  likes,  and, 
being  inactive  and  fond  of  his  comfort,  used  to 
take  many  cabs  when  cabs  could  be  taken.  He 
also  drank  a  certain  moderate  quantity  of  beer 
when  it  was,  at  least,  an  intelligible  proceeding  to 
drink  beer.  Further,  he  preferred  an  excellent 
meal  in  a  tavern,  with  good  company,  to  decorous 
malnutrition  at  two  shillings  a  mouthful. 

It  was  inevitable  that  a  legend  should  grow 
round  such  a  man;  unfortunately  the  legend,  for 
most  people,  has  strangled  the  man,  as  ivy  does 
a  tree.  I  have  before  me  what  purports  to  be 
a  critical  study  of  Mr.  Chesterton.  If  I  knew 
nothing  else  of  the  subject  I  should  picture  a 
person  physically  and  mentally  inert,  conceited, 
rather  puerile,  and  given  to  paltry  verbal  smart- 
ness— a  Cockney  Tony  Lumpkin  who,  like  Olivia 
Primrose,  had  *^read  a  great  deal  of  controversy.'' 
It  may  be  Mr.  Chesterton's  fault  that  he  is  so 
represented.  It  is  certainly  society's  misfortune 
that  it  has  no  clearer  estimate  of  one  of  the  most 
powerful  personalities  of  the  time. 

Clearly  the  only  way  to  arrive  at  the  truth  is  to 
put  in  as  evidence  Mr.  Chesterton's  own  books. 
Swinburne  has  protested  against  the  theory  that 
an  unlettered  Shakespeare  wrote  ** Hamlet"  with- 


70  ALL  AND  SUNDRY 

out  effort  in  odd  times — **as  a  bird  might  moult 
a  feather  or  a  fool  might  break  a  jest";  he  knew 
that  such  things  were  not  made  so.  And  the 
works  of  Gilbert  Keith  Chesterton  contain  ample 
testimony  on  which  to  found  an  impeachment  of 
a  quite  novel  kind.  He  stands  hereby  indicted 
for  that  he  has  laboured  well  and  faithfully,  first 
to  see  the  truth  and  then  to  tell  it;  for  that  he, 
being  a  great  rhetorician,  seldom  uses  rhetoric  to 
obscure  or  to  deceive;  and,  being  a  great  wit, 
employs  wit  only  to  season  wisdom  and  make  it 
memorable.  How  say  you,  Gilbert  Keith  Chester- 
ton, are  you  guilty  or  not  guilty? 

Of  course,  Mr.  Chesterton  talks  nonsense  some- 
times, and  often  he  is  right  rather  by  a  divine 
luck  than  by  conscious  effort.  Of  much  of  his 
work  he  can  say,  like  Petruchio,  **It  is  extempore, 
from  my  mother-wit."  His  insight,  or  perhaps 
it  would  be  more  accurate  to  say  his  power  of 
guessing,  almost  approaches  a  sixth  sense.  His 
dexterity  in  using  words  is  like  that  of  a  gifted 
stock-rider  in  using  whips;  he  seems  almost  to 
misuse  them  in  the  sense  of  forcing  them  to  do 
more  than  their  proper  work.  It  seems  as  un- 
natural to  smash  a  rationalist  with  a  pun  as  to 
flick  a  fly  off  a  lady's  back  with  a  thirty-foot  lash. 
Of  Mr.  Chesterton's  wit  there  can  be  no  question; 
it  is  stressed  most  by  those  least  inclined  to  take 


ME.  G.  K.  CHESTEETON  71 

Mm  seriously.  But  the  praise  is  nearly  always 
wrongly  given.  The  popular  idea  of  him  is  of 
a  man  perpetually  standing  on  his  head,  and 
shouting  joyously  how  funny  things  look  from 
that  standpoint;  whereas  the  whole  point  of  his 
best  jokes  is  that  he  is  astonished  to  be  flat  on 
his  feet,  while  other  men  (quite  gravely  and  nat- 
urally) are  careering  about  upside  down. 

But  wit,  readiness,  and  even  genius,  fail  to 
account  for  all  the  rare  merit  there  is  in  much 
of  Mr.  Chesterton's  work.  This  undisciplined 
jester,  this  wayward  Bohemian,  has  done  some  re- 
markable things.  For  example,  there  is  his  **  Vic- 
torian Age  in  Literature.''  It  is  a  trifle,  of  course, 
but  such  a  trifle!  An  essay  is  often  condensed 
in  a  phrase;  there  are  paragraphs  in  it  with  more 
real  illumination  than  one  can  find  in  many  labori- 
ous and  scholarly  treatises.  Again,  it  is  no  light 
business  to  set  about  telling  the  history  of  Eng- 
land in  two  hundred  and  forty  pages.  Mr.  Ches- 
terton does  not  tell  it;  no  god  or  mortal  could. 
But,  with  much  fancy,  perhaps  some  fantasy,  and 
a  wealth  of  incidental  wisdom,  he  gives  more 
essential  truth  than  has  ever  been  packed  in  such 
a  space  by  any  English  historical  writer.  Then 
there  are  his  '^Browning"  and  ** Dickens  ";  on 
the  whole  these  are,  perhaps,  on  a  lower  plane, 
but  they  are  most  excellent  criticism,  and  some- 


72  ALL  AND  SUNDEY 

thing  more.  Mr.  Chesterton  can  provide  us 
material  for  much  thought  even  in  a  detective 
story,  and  a  sheaf  of  his  newspaper  articles,  if 
you  can  take  the  trouble  to  thrash  them,  will  pro- 
vide much  corn.  He  is  wittier  than  Swift,  and 
has  more  than  Swift's  wisdom.  For  his  wisdom 
is  of  the  heart  as  well  as  of  the  head;  he  feels 
even  more  strongly  and  truly  than  he  thinks. 

There  is,  of  course,  another  and  weaker  side  to 
Mr.  Chesterton.  His  proper  business  is  to  give 
us  great  truths  if  possible,  and,  failing  that,  what 
the  schoolboy  would  call  ^* whopping  great  lies," 
lies  so  vast  and  provocative  as  to  make  the  defence 
of  truth  a  necessity.  We  want  to  know  from  him 
the  rude  and  thorny  path  to  one  considerable 
place,  and  the  broad  road  to  another.  But  we  do 
not  look  to  him  for  a  directory  of  Houndsditch  or 
a  plan  of  the  underground  places  of  Westminster. 
He  is  just  as  likely  to  be  wrong  in  very  small 
things  as  he  is  to  be  right  in  very  large  things. 
Not  that  the  small  things  are  unimportant,  but 
they  are  work  for  lesser  men.  By  all  means  let 
Mr.  Chesterton  thunder  at  Parliamentary  corrup- 
tion and  Parliamentary  futility  in  general;  but 
the  special  case  of  the  notorious  Mr.  Snide,  M.P., 
is  better  left  to  another.  It  may  be  for  the  public 
good  as  well  as  for  the  comfort  of  Mr.  Chesterton's 
own  soul  that  he  should  rail  at  Israel,  or,  as  he 


MR.  G.  K.  CHESTERTON  73 

would  himself  put  it,  rescue  the  Jew  from  the 
unfair  position  he  occupies  in  the  modern  State. 
But  Mr.  Chesterton  is  too  big  a  man  to  spit  upon 
a  single  Jewish  gabardine.  It  may  be  possible  to 
respect  and  even  sympathise  with  Torquemada. 
But  nobody  of  fine  sense  would  like  to  think  of 
him  as  taking  a  turn  at  the  rack  with  his  own  hand. 

It  is  this  local  lack  of  balance,  much  more  than 
fear  of  the  omnipresent  and  omnipotent  Israelite, 
that  prevents  timid  souls  from  adopting  Mr.  Ches- 
terton as  a  leader.  They  are  afraid  that,  if  there 
happens  to  be  no  crusade,  they  may  get  mixed 
up  in  a  pogrom.  Yet  he  does,  in  a  roundabout 
way,  influence  many  who  in  turn  have  an  effect 
on  public  opinion.  These  men  quote  his  jests  to 
point  morals  they  have  furtively  borrowed  from 
him.  If  you  are  fairly  familiar  with  Mr.  Ches- 
terton's thought  you  will  recognise  it  as  easily 
in  the  leading  columns  as  in  the  *^  Pithy  Para- 
graphs'' or  ** Wisdom  of  the  Week."  Of  course, 
as  in  most  cases  of  theft,  the  thief  mars  what 
he  steals.  But  the  merchandise  does  reach  some 
sort  of  market  that  way.  One  catches  thought, 
like  disease,  without  knowing  whence,  and  Mr. 
Chesterton,  if  he  takes  notice  at  all,  must  some- 
times smile  at  finding  in  the  primmest  quarters 
a  faint  echo  of  his  most  revolutionary  slogans. 

For  Mr.  Chesterton,  though  and  perhaps  because 


74  ALL  AND  SUNDRY 

he  is  an  optimist,  is  a  decided  revolutionary.  It 
must  be  added  a  generous  one,  for  his  compelling 
motive  is  a  noble  and  comprehensive  sympathy 
with  the  captive  and  the  oppressed.  He  sees  in 
modem  civilisation  a  Bastille  in  which  there  are 
very  vile  dungeons,  moderately  comfortable  cells, 
and  pleasant  quarters  for  the  governor  and  his 
staff,  but  in  which  all,  governor  and  staff  in- 
cluded, are  true  prisoners.  It  is  dull  work  for 
Baisemeaux,  the  gaoler,  as  well  as  for  the  young 
prince,  the  unlucky  pamphleteer,  and  the  name- 
less wretches  below  the  moat;  and  Mr.  Chesterton 
would  set  them  all  free. 

It  is  the  tyranny  of  civilisation  itself,  the  bond- 
age of  things  rather  than  the  incidental  cruelties 
of  men  themselves  bound  (though  in  chains  of 
gold  and  swathes  of  precious  paper)  that  he  is 
out  td  fight.  He  sympathises  with  a  strike  as  a 
strike,  without  regard  to  the  ostensible  merits  of 
the  dispute.  It  is  an  attempt  of  the  victim  bound 
to  the  tyrannous  wheel  of  routine  to  throw  it 
momentarily  out  of  gear  if  he  cannot  subdue  it 
to  his  own  rational  wants.  Such  an  attempt,  if 
it  asserts  only  for  a  moment  the  sovereignty  of 
man  over  things,  is  worth  the  while. 

There  is  a  case  for  this  passionate  protest 
against  the  enslavement  of  the  human  spirit  by 
the  mere  appurtenances  of  civilisation.     And  yet, 


MR.  G.  K.  CHESTERTON  75 

while  we  may  yield  assent  to  Mr.  Chesterton's 
doctrine  of  revolt  in  the  abstract,  is  it  quite  well 
that,  in  such  dangerous  times,  revolution  for  rev- 
olution's sake  should  be  preached  with  a  kind  of 
serious  jollity  by  a  man  of  great  eloquence  and 
talent?  Is  it  well  that,  when  our  shaky  old 
institutions  are  suffering  the  heaviest  possible 
strain,  all  the  wit  and  eloquence  of  Mr.  Chesterton 
should  be  employed  further  to  discredit  them? 
Does  he  quite  help  just  now?    I  wonder. 


LORD  SYDENHAM  OF  COMBE 

It  is  a  common  but  unsound  view  that  public 
opinion  is  formed  by  men  who  think.  Much  of 
it  is  made  by  men  quite  incapable  of  thought. 
There  can  be  no  greater  practical  mistake  than 
to  overlook  the  importance  of  the  great  army  of 
writers  and  speakers  who  are  nothing  and  origi- 
nate nothing,  but  simply  repeat  the  platitudes  or 
fallacies  that  happen  to  be  floating  about  in  their 
circle.  Contempt  for  what  one  may  call  the 
anthropoid  mind,  the  intelligence  of  imitancy  and 
hearsay,  should  not  obscure  the  plain  fact  that  it 
is  often  extremely  powerful.  It  was  not  Darwin, 
for  example,  who  convinced  the  little  modern  free- 
thinker that  he  originated  in  a  jungle  and  ought 
to  be  rather  happy  that  he  has  risen  to  a  slum. 
It  was  rather  the  thousand-and-one  loud  fools 
who  have  wrenched  Darwin's  conclusions  from 
their  context. 

In  politics  especially  the  anthropoid  mind  has 
great  influence.  The  public  is  affected,  as  the 
stone  is  worn  by  the  water-drop,  non  vi  sed  saepe 
cadendo.  One  foolish  phrase,  eternally  repeated, 
works  a  miracle  denied  to  the  profoundest  wisdom. 
The  wise  man  of  fine  intellect  who  says  his  say 

76 


LORD  SYDENHAM  OF  COMBE  77 

and  has  done  with  it  may  indeed  win  in  the  long 
run.  But  more  useful  in  a  whirling  election  cam- 
paign is  the  dull  stump  orator  (mounted  on  a 
sufficient  stump)  who  can  go  on  repeating  with 
passion  and  apparent  conviction  things  not  worth 
saying  at  all. 

It  is  from  this  point  of  view  that  Lord  Sydenham 
is  well  worth  study.  He  never  says  a  memorable 
thing;  he  writes  discouraging  English;  he  habitu- 
ally slops  about  in  quagmires  of  confusion;  and 
he  has  withal  a  peculiar  arrogance  which  ought 
to  antagonise  any  spirited  reader.  It  is  an  arro- 
gance as  curiously  compounded  as  the  melancholy 
of  Jacques.  It  is  not  the  simple  and  almost  grace- 
ful arrogance  of  the  mere  man  of  rank,  but  has 
something  of  the  soldier's,  which  is  brusque,  and 
the  University  man's,  which  is  superior,  and  the 
Indian  Civil  Servant's,  which  is  frankly  intolera- 
ble. Perhaps  no  living  writer  is  at  once  so  power- 
fully soporific  and  so  profoundly  irritating.  Yet 
it  cannot  be  denied  that  Lord  Sydenham  is  an 
influence  by  virtue  of  these  very  vices.  His  in- 
sensibility permits  him  always  to  be  talking.  His 
want  of  point  commends  him  to  the  very  large 
English  class  which  suspects  any  kind  of  brilliance, 
and  argues  that,  since  most  true  things  are  rather 
prosaic,  it  must  follow  that  very  prosaic  things 
must  be  specially  true. 


78  ALL  AND  SUNDEY 

These  remarks,  of  course,  apply  only  to  Lord 
Sydenham  in  his  more  recent  capacity  of  journal- 
ist. Of  his  official  career  the  present  writer  is 
incompetent  to  speak.  It  seems  to  have  been  of 
the  ordinary  ** brilliant"  kind.  The  mere  facts 
are  that  George  Sydenham  Clarke,  the  son  of  a 
parson,  joined  the  Koyal  Engineers  in  1868;  that 
he  won  the  usual  kind  of  minor  honours  in  the 
usual  kind  of  minor  campaigns;  that  he  after- 
wards got  War  Office  employment  and  acquired 
the  habit  of  getting  on  Commissions,  Committees, 
and  special  missions;  and  that  finally  he  reached 
undisputed  greatness  as  Governor  of  Victoria  and 
Bombay.  It  is  a  reasonable  inference  that,  coming 
from  no  family  in  particular,  he  owed  this  steady 
rise  to  real  aptitudes  and  industries  of  his  own. 
Parsons'  sons,  like  wholesale  grocers,  are  not  made 
peers  for  nothing;  and  it  is  quite  reasonable  to 
conclude  that,  since  Lord  Sydenham  is  not  notori- 
ously a  monster  of  wealth,  he  must  have  been  a 
man  of  marked  administrative  ability. 

But,  just  as  a  prisoner  charged  with  disorderly 
conduct  is  precluded  the  defence  that  he  once 
won  the  Victoria  Cross,  so  Lord  Sydenham  cannot 
bring  before  a  literary  assize  his  proud  record  in 
the  Antipodes  and  the  Indian  Empire.  He  must 
be  judged  as  if  he  were,  say,  Mr.  Harold  Begbie. 
As  a  journalist,  it  must  be  handsomely  acknowl- 


LORD  SYDENHAM  OF  COMBE  79 

edged,  he  is  extraordinarily  industrious  and  ver- 
satile, with  that  **nose  for  news,*'  that  uncanny 
instinct    for    the    topical,    which    distinguishes    a 
master  of  the  craft.     He  knows  exactly  what  is 
** uppermost."     The  day  before  yesterday  it  was 
the   Zeppelins;    the    day   before    that   it   was    the 
Channel  Tunnel;  Lord  Sydenham  emerged  as  an 
authority  on  both.    Then  the  Prime  Minister  says 
something  about  drink,  and  in  the  same  evening's 
paper  Lord  Sydenham  is  explaining  his  notion  of 
a  perfect  strait-waistcoat  for  the  unsteady  son  of 
toil.     Next  comes  a  week-end  strike,  and  for  his 
favourite  Sunday  paper  Lord  Sydenham  produces 
from  his  hat,  as  the  conjuror  does  a  rabbit,  the 
very   latest   West   End   recipe   for   an   industrial 
millennium,   in   which   every   workman    will    earn 
fabulous   wages    and    every   manufacturer   vastly 
increase  his  profits.    Lord  Sydenham  is  more  sure 
of   everything   than  less   lucky  men   are   of   any- 
thing.   Among  a  sheaf  of  articles  taken  at  random 
are  definite  and  even  dogmatic  pronouncements  on 
the  Air  Service,  the  Censorship,  all  kinds  of  naval 
and  military  questions,  the  conscientious  objector, 
divorce,  farming  in  India,  and  the  Irish  question. 
Small  wonder  that  one  of  his  admirers  remarks 
that  **  there  are  few  subjects  on  which  he  is  not  a 
real  authority.'' 
Lord  Sydenham's  own  attitude  appears  to  be 


80  ALL  AND  SUNDEY 

that  of  the  American  who  was  asked  by  Lincoln 
if  he  had  ever  commanded  an  army.  ^*No,''  was 
the  reply.  ^*Do  you  think  you  could  command 
an  armyf  asked  Lincoln.  **Well,"  said  the  mod- 
est man,  **I  know  of  no  reason  to  the  contrary." 
Lord  Sydenham  sees  no  reason  why  he  should  not 
act  as  Adviser-General  to  mankind.  For  he  does 
not  limit  himself  to  the  British  Empire.  He  is 
quite  ready  to  suggest  what  **  every  thoughtful 
American '^  should  believe,  or  to  put  on  record 
what  ** intelligent  Frenchmen  of  every  class''  are 
saying.  Of  course,  it  would  be  quite  impossible 
for  any  Frenchman  or  any  American  to  think  as 
Lord  Sydenham  does.  His  mind  is  as  English 
as  a  pliim-pudding,  or  as  his  own  handsome  and 
rounded  features.  But  it  is  the  essence  of  Lord 
Sydenham's  method  to  presume  agreement  where 
there  is  the  most  fundamental  conflict.  For  ex- 
ample, it  is  the  fashion  of  the  moment — and  Lord 
Sydenham,  of  course,  follows  it — to  talk  about 
capital  and  labour  ** coming  together."  One  would 
imagine  a  precedent  condition  to  **  coming  to- 
gether" is  to  ascertain  exactly  what  keeps  capital 
and  labour  apart.  Instead,  Lord  Sydenham  sim- 
ply strings  together  all  the  commonplaces  current 
in  his  circle,  talks  loosely  about  patriotism,  the 
absurdity  of  trade  union  rules,  Chinese  competi- 
tion,  German  science,  and  American  *^push  and 


LORD  SYDENHAM  OF  COMBE  81 

go/'  and  heads  the  resultant  article  ** Problem 
of  Production — A  Practical  Solution.'*  The  ** solu- 
tion'' is  that  each  party  should  do  justly  by  the 
other.  It  is  almost  as  practical  as  tTie  deliverance 
of  a  judge  who  should  say,  '*My  decision  is  that 
equity  shall  be  observed  as  between  the  parties, 
and  I  refer  the  details  to  the  learned  Registrar." 
On  a  working  man,  who  does  actually  get  up 
at  five  o'clock  in  the  morning,  and  has  actually 
negotiated  with  his  employers  over  what  he  con- 
siders a  just  wage,  this  bland  assumption  that  his 
trade  union  rules  are  merely  obstructive  nonsense 
has  no  effect  beyond  a  vague  irritation.  It  is  of 
a  piece  with  the  tactful  declarations  of  chiffon- 
clad  duchesses  that  **we  must  all  produce  more 
and  work  very  much  harder  in  future."  But  it 
is  not  to  the  working  man  that  Lord  Sydenham 
addresses  himself.  His  business  is  not  so  much 
to  convert  as  to  confirm,  not  to  spread  new  truths 
but  to  strengthen  old  prejudices.  It  is  in  this 
sense  that  he  is  a  considerable  influence,  and 
perhaps  a  dangerous  one.  What  he  says  in  effect 
is  this:  **You,  the  comfortable  middle  class,  are 
a  little  upset  by  all  this  wild  talk  about  Labour 
and  a  new  world.  Bless  your  souls,  there's  noth- 
ing new  in  it  all.  Leave  it  to  us;  we  are  past- 
masters  in  the  art  of  *  dishing.'  You  may  think 
we  have  managed  a  little  badly  here  and  there. 


82  ALL  AND  SUNDRY 

But  give  us  a  little  time,  and  we  will  bring  our- 
selves through — and  you  with  us.  Bolshevism, 
and  Labour  Ministers,  and  all  shall  pass  away: 
but  we  shall  not  pass  away.  Occupons  nous  de 
ce  qui  est  eternel/' 

Lord  Sydenham  is  quite  properly  severe  on 
** class-consciousness,''  and  in  one  important  re- 
spect he  and  his  like  can  claim  a  real  superiority 
over  the  people  they  accuse  of  **  sectionalism. ' ' 
Labour  certainly  is  *  ^  class-conscious " — that  is  to 
say,  a  little  shame-faced.  It  knows  that  its  posi- 
tion is  indefensible,  and  its  only  excuse  is  that  it 
is  adopted  for  defence.  Lord  Sydenham  and  the 
people  he  represents  have  no  such  class-conscious- 
ness, for  the  quite  simple  reason  that  they  do  not 
think  of  themselves  as  a  class.    They  are  England. 

It  is  in  this  assumption  that  there  is  only  one 
set  of  solid  and  legitimate  interests,  and  that  all 
other  claims  are  the  invention  of  rebels  and  agi- 
tators, that  the  chief  danger  to  our  society  resides. 
Our  ruling  caste  still  regards  the  mass  of  the 
population  as  essentially  servile.  It  accepts  the 
notion  of  voters  to  be  bamboozled,  but  refuses  that 
of  citizens  to  be  dealt  with  on  level  terms.  Every 
few  years  come  the  Saturnalia  of  a  General  Elec- 
tion, in  which  the  lord  makes  obeisance  to  the 
slave;  but  the  moment  the  last  vote  is  cast  the 
lord  goes  home   to   a  bath  in  which  he  washes 


LORD  SYDENHAM  OF  COMBE  83 

away  every  physical  and  moral  trace  of  his  degra- 
dation, and  until  a  dissolution  again  approaches 
he  comports  himself  as  if  affairs  of  the  State  lit- 
erally concerned  only  a  few  families.  Examine 
everything  non-technical  that  Lord  Sydenham  has 
written,  and  you  will  find  the  one  fixed  point  in 
a  shifting  bog  of  inconsistencies  is  this — that  **the 
people, ''  or  *Hhe  masses,"  or  the  ** working 
classes,"  are  something  to  be  managed  by  trained 
and  intelligent  people  like  Lord  Sydenham;  there 
is  no  morsel  of  comprehension  that,  after  all,  they 
might  prefer  to  manage  themselves,  and  not  simply 
to  vote  for  this  or  that  set  of  masters. 

Wonderful  anomalies  are  often  strangely  static, 
and  it  is  not  for  the  present  writer  to  dogmatise 
as  to  the  impossibility  of  maintaining  this  narrow 
oligarchic  temper  under  conditions  of  what  almost 
amounts  to  universal  suffrage.  But  obviously  there 
must  be  some  considerable  strain  coming  to  a 
society  so  constituted,  and  that  strain  will  cer- 
tainly not  be  lessened  by  the  counsels  of  people 
so  entirely  satisfied  with  themselves  and  with  their 
order  as  is  Baron  Sydenham  of  Combe. 


SIR  ERIC  GEDDES 

In  the  Arabian  tale  the  genie,  released  by  chance 
from  the  copper  vase  with  the  seal  of  Solomon 
the  Wise,  first  took  the  form  of  a  dense  mist;  it 
was  only  by  slow  degrees  that  the  poor  fisherman 
got  to  know  quite  what  was  happening. 

The  recent  career  of  Sir  Eric  Geddes,  so  far 
as  the  ordinary  man  has  been  able  to  judge  of  it, 
has  followed  much  the  same  course.  First  he 
was  a  discovery;  then  he  was  a  myth;  now  the 
outline  of  him  is  clear  enough,  though  there  is 
perhaps  still  room  for  guessing  in  detail.  Only 
five  years  ago  Eric  Geddes  was  the  imprisoned 
djinn,  in  a  roomy  enough  bottle,  sealed  with  the 
seal  of  John  Bull  the  Foolish,  bearing  the  words, 
**Thus  far,  and  perhaps  a  little  farther,  but  not 
much."  Deputy  manager  of  the  North-Eastem 
Railway,  his  name  as  powerful  as  an  incantation 
from  York  to  Berwick,  he  had  achieved  before 
forty  almost  the  limit  of  advancement  in  his  own 
line.  A  little  luck  and  a  great  deal  of  ability  had 
contributed  to  this  result.  Part  of  the  luck,  of 
course,  consisted  in  being  bom  a  Scotsman;  the 
rest  was  a  chance  encounter  with  a  brother  Scot 
in    some    out-of-the-way    corner    of  India.      Sir 

84 


SIR  ERIC  GEDDES  85 

George  Gibb,  great  in  the  railway  world,  happened 
to  meet  Mr.  Geddes  at  dinner;  marked  him  as  a 
man  of  promise;  and  soon  after  cabled  him  from 
England,  **Will  you  take  a  post  on  the  North- 
EasternT*  The  reply  flashed  across  the  cable 
was,  *^ Starting  on  Monday.^'  Eric  Geddes,  with 
years  of  roughing  it  behind  him,  now  in  the 
Carnegie  Steel  Works,  now  in  the  lumber  trade, 
now  as  a  general  utility  railwayman  on  the  Balti- 
more and  Ohio  line,  latterly  as  the  manager  of  a 
light  railway  through  an  Indian  jungle — had  one 
indisputable  faculty:  he  knew  a  good  thing  when 
he  saw  it.  Fate  was  kind  to  him,  perhaps  also  to 
his  country,  when  it  put  his  napkin  next  to  Sir 
George  Gibb's,  and  said,  **You  two  men  ought 
to  know  each  other."  But  fate  did  no  more  than 
act  the  part  of  master  of  the  ceremonies;  Mr. 
Geddes  did  the  rest.  He  saw  at  once  the  chance 
he  had  waited  for  since  he  gave  up  the  idea  of 
the  Army,  and  set  out  to  fashion  his  own  career 
as  one  of  ** Heaven's  Swiss.''  However  delicious 
the  curry  may  have  been  that  night,  we  may  be 
sure  Mr.  Geddes  (though  ordinarily  appreciative 
of  all  good  things  of  the  concrete  kind)  did  not 
notice  its  flavour;  he  was  thinking  of  quite  other 
matters.  Every  Scot's  porridge  is  salted  with 
ambition;  their  mountains  teach  them  to  look 
high;  their  ancestors'  habit  of  going  barefoot  on 


86  ALL  AND  SUNDRY 

rough  roads  has  endowed  them  with  a  sixth  sense 
of  caution;  but,  having  felt  all  clear  in  their  path, 
they  tread  it  with  feet  specially  designed  to  give 
a  firm  hold.  ^* Starting  on  Monday''  was  not  the 
reply  of  an  impetuous  or  adventurous  man,  but 
of  one  who  had  calculated  all  chances;  the  answer 
had  probably  been  framed  long  before  the  ques- 
tion. 

It  is  the  admirable  quality  of  the  Scot,  when 
he  has  got  one  good  thing,  to  begin  straightway 
to  deserve  a  better;  Eric  Geddes  might  escape 
'  the  notice  of  Lord  Claud  Hamilton,  then  searching 
these  islands  in  vain  for  a  man  competent  to 
manage  the  Great  Eastern  Railway,  but  he  ad- 
vanced rapidly  in  the  confidence  of  his  new  em- 
ployers, and  the  only  limits  of  his  ultimate  pro- 
motion were  clearly  those  of  his  trade.  Beyond 
that,  of  course,  it  seemed  most  unlikely  that 
he  would  ever  go.  It  was  nobody's  business  to 
search  him  for  qualities  meet  for  still  higher 
work;  it  has  been  nobody's  business  for  nearly 
a  century  past;  what  we  call  ** democracy"  has 
been,  in  fact,  less  favourable  to  the  discovery  of 
governing  talent  than  the  frankly  oligarchical  sys- 
tem of  the  rotten  borough  days.  Mr.  Geddes  was 
poor;  he  had  no  great  family  connections;  his 
business  was  to  act  and  not  to  talk;  he  was  a 
man    of    what    Carlyle    called    the    **beaverish" 


SIR  ERIC  GEDDES  87 

species,   not    to    be    thought    of    as    a   governing 
person. 

But  the  coming  of  war  brought  violent  changes 
in  the  standard  of  values.  Gold  went  up  and 
paper  went  down.  The  rulers  of  England,  forced 
to  look  everywhere  for  precious  metal  not  bearing 
the  guinea  stamp,  did  happily  succeed  in  finding 
much  of  it,  as  well  as  much  glittering  rubbish. 
Eric  Geddes,  as  we  now  know,  was  one  of  the 
more  fortunate  discoveries.  The  absurd  over- 
praise lavished  on  him  has  naturally  led  to  some 
reaction.  But  within  his  own  limits — and  one 
of  them  is  an  intense  anxiety  for  **Ma  career-r-r" 
— ^there  can  be  no  doubt  of  his  ability.  Placed 
in  charge  of  a  great  Munitions  Department  in 
1915,  he  showed  such  talent  for  organisation,  such 
energy  and  resource,  that  he  was  speedily  made 
Deputy  Director-General.  Then,  when  the  main 
difficulty  became,  not  scarcity  of  men  or  fighting 
material,  but  the  clogged  transport  in  France, 
it  was  to  him  that  Government  turned.  The  eye 
of  a  great  judge  of  men  had  marked  him  as 
the  only  possible  choice;  and  how  well  the  ex- 
railway  manager  justified  such  confidence  Sir 
Douglas  Haig  has  put  on  record  in  his  official 
tribute  to  the  **  great  ability,  organising  power, 
and  energy  of  the  Director-General  of  Transporta- 
tion."    Like   Caesar,   Mr.  Geddes   came,  he   saw, 


88  ALL  AND  SUNDRY 

he  overcame;  difficulties  disappeared  before  his 
masterful  intelligence ;  and  by  the  time  he  returned 
to  England,  a  knight  and  a  Major-General,  the 
great  problem  was   solved. 

Sir  Eric  Geddes  in  his  Vice- Admiral's  uniform 
is  a  less  certain  figure;  here  we  are  really  in  the 
region  of  myth;  things  were  done  under  him,  but 
how  far  he  was  chief  agent,  how  far  the  mere  in- 
strument of  a  policy,  who  shall  yet  say?  But  the 
real  man  undoubtedly  emerges  as  the  first  Min- 
ister of  Ways  and  Communications.  In  that  char- 
acter the  public  sees,  on  a  well-lighted  stage,  the 
qualities  which  have  counted  in  the  action  behind 
the  scenes.  Sir  Eric  Geddes  is  emphatically  the 
Artist  as  Organiser.  In  regard  to  material  things, 
he  has  the  same  sort  of  instinct  which  distinguishes 
Marshal  Foch  from  a  clever  Brigadier,  Mr.  Sar- 
gent from  Mr.  Velasquez  Brown,  R.B.A.,  the  sci- 
entific actuary  from  the  accountant,  the  great 
writer  from  the  mere  literary  man.  He  is  the 
master  of  his  materials,  and  not  their  slave.  He 
gives  everything  its  just  value;  distinguishes  the 
vital  from  the  non-essential;  feels  and  tastes  a 
problem  rather  than  reasons  about  it.  When  he 
spoke  about  the  Navy  one  felt  somehow  that  this 
instinct,  if  not  absent,  was  at  least  inactive;  when 
he  speaks  about  transport  the  impression  is  of 
a  man  who  sees  the  finished  result  just  as  clearly 


SIR  ERIC  GEDDES  89 

as  Phidias  saw  Zeus  in  the  block  of  unhewn  marble. 
There  is  no  lordlier  spectacle  than  the  man  who 
understands  his  job  supremely  well,  and  intelligent 
men  who  have  worked  with  Sir  Eric  Geddes 
express  an  enthusiasm  all  the  more  convincing 
because  it  is  generally  expressed  with  a  certain 
limitation;  they  would  have  the  cobbler  stick  to 
his  last,  and  give  a  little  shiver  of  outraged  con- 
noisseurship  when  he  travels,  as  he  has  done  on 
occasion,  into  general  politics.  There  the  genie 
abruptly  descends  from  the  Arabian  Nights'  level 
to  that  of  Mr.  Anstey's  magicians;  the  classic 
becomes  the  middle-classic. 

Being  an  artist  in  his  own  line,  Sir  Eric  has 
some  trace  of  the  artistic  temperament;  he  is  a 
sensitive  man,  easily  irritated  by  criticism,  and  by 
no  means  insensible  to  flattery;  he  wants  managing, 
and  is  best  managed  when  he  knows  nothing  of 
the  process.  Being  a  Scot,  he  is  cautious  in  self 
affairs,  and  there  is  no  more  sentiment  about  him 
than  about  his  professor  brother.  No  man  believes 
more  firmly  that  the  labourer — above  a  certain 
social  level — ^is  worthy  of  his  hire.  This  caution 
was  shown  in  his  so  long  preferring  as  paymaster 
the  North-Eastem  Railway  to  the  State,  and  it 
was  probably  only  after  a  severe  mental  struggle 
that  (even  with  a  most  advantageous  agreement 
in  his  safe)    he  made  up  his  mind  to  exchange 


90  ALL  AND  SUNDRY 

one  master  for  forty-five  millions.  Whether,  from 
that  special  point  of  view,  he  was  wise  in  making 
his  election  depends  on  the  sincerity  of  our  con- 
version to  reasonable  politics.  If  we  really  want 
Eeconstruction  here  is  an  invaluable  instrument 
in  one  important  department.  What  Sir  Eric 
Geddes  thinks  about  things  in  general  is  of  the 
smallest  consequence;  what  he  knows  about  rail- 
ways and  organisation  on  the  great  scale  is  of  the 
largest  possible  moment.  Sir  Eric  Geddes  is  a 
test  case.  The  whole  virtue  of  him  is  that  he  is 
master  of  a  particular  business,  and  has  energy 
and  imagination  for  that.  He  is  not  to  be  trusted 
— ^no  men  should  be  trusted — with  unlimited  powers. 
Above  all  he  should  be  sternly  estopped  from 
any  excursions  beyond  his  own  department.  But 
if  he  is  allowed  (irrespective  of  party  vicissitudes, 
and  without  the  obligation  to  perform  party  serv- 
ices) to  do  the  work  which  nobody,  probably,  can 
do  so  well,  it  will  be  a  fair  augury  of  the  reality 
not  of  government  by  *^ business  men''  (which  is 
sure  to  be  bad),  but  by  men  who  know  their 
business,  which  is  quite  another  thing. 


MR.  FRANK  BRANGWYN,  R.A. 

Behind  a  high  and  rather  forbidding  wall  in  a 
street  off  the  Broadway  at  Hannnersmith,  where 
few  prospects  please  and  most  of  the  architecture 
is  vile,  stands  one  of  those  long,  low  Georgian 
houses,  a  few  years  ago  common  in  every  older 
suburb,  against  which  the  flat  speculator  has  waged 
a  war  of  extermination.  From  the  front  door  one 
can  hear  the  wail  of  a  baby  in  the  flats  opposite, 
but  behind  is  cool  verdure,  and  the  waving  of  old 
elms. 

This  house  serves  as  dwelling-place  and  atelier 
to  Mr.  Frank  Brangwyn,  who  recently  became  a 
member  of  the  Royal  Academy.  Here  Mr.  Brang- 
wyn may  sometimes  be  seen  bending  over  an  acid 
bath;  the  proofs  from  that  plate  are  all  bespoken 
at  the  rate  of  shillings  to  the  square  inch.  Here, 
at  another  time,  he  receives  outlandish-looking 
visitors,  who  bring  him  rarities  in  the  way  of 
Bokhara  rugs  and  ancient  Persian  pottery.  Here 
he  will  talk  art  to  sympathetic  listeners,  and  main- 
tain a  masterly  silence  in  the  presence  of  fashion- 
able faddists  whom  his  common-sense  virility  dis- 
approves. Here,  occasionally,  great  personages  de- 
scend on  him;  one  wonders  what  they  really  make 

91 


92  ALL  AND  SUNDRY 

of  the  artist,  who  is  quite  innocent  of  Courts  and 
their  ways,  and  knows  only  man  as  man,  and  art 
as  a  form  of  work.  For  Mr.  Brangwyn,  while 
wholly  unable  to  define  his  polities,  is  essential 
democrat  to  the  marrow  of  him,  though,  unlike  the 
accredited  democrats,  he  has  a  deep  love  of  dis- 
tinction in  any  form. 

In  one  sense  this  house,  a  cool  oasis  of  antique 
dignity  in  a  desert  of  modern  brick-and-mortar, 
symbolises  its  tenant.  For  Mr.  Brangwyn  owes 
his  distinction  as  an  artist  to  a  singular  and  happy 
mingling  of  intense  modernism  in  externals  with 
the  faith  and  spirit  of  a  long  time  past.  He  is  a 
man  of  the  Middle  Ages  in  trousers;  and  the  more 
really  one  because  he  has  no  positive  objection 
to  the  trousers.  Indeed,  there  could  be  nothing 
more  authentically  twentieth  century  than  the  outer 
man  of  Mr.  Brangwyn.  He  is  not,  indeed,  a  typi- 
cally English  figure.  The  full,  florid,  bearded  face 
might  well  belong  to  some  prosperous  Brussels 
tradesman;  it  is  the  kind  of  face  one  often  used 
to  see  on  a  Sunday  afternoon  in  the  Bois  de  la 
Cambre,  placid  and  eupeptic,  beaming  alternately 
on  a  highly  comfortable  Bock  and  a  highly  com- 
fortable wife.  For  Mr.  Brangwyn,  though  of 
Welsh  descent,  was  born  at  Bruges,  and  has  more 
than  a  suggestion  of  the  once  fat  land  of  Flanders. 
He  is  rather  the  Continental  bourgeois  than  the 


MR.  FRANK  BRANGWYN,  R.A.  93 

English  middle-class  man,  but  with  as  little  artistic 
affectation  as  either;  if  ever  he  were  seen  in  a 
velveteen  jacket  it  must  have  been  very  early  in 
his  career,  and  his  taste  in  ties  is  as  sober  as 
a  bank  director's.  Nobody,  of  course,  could  pos- 
sibly mistake  him  for  a  bank  director,  or  for  any 
kind  of  business  man;  there  is  a  faint  note  of 
the  Bohemian  with  all  his  rectitude;  and  you  feel 
that  he  takes  no  real  joy  in  his  trouser  crease. 
But  if  there  is  no  enthusiasm  there  is  no  revolt. 
Mr.  Brangwyn  accepts  the  conventions  as  he  ac- 
cepts every  other  external  of  the  twentieth  cen- 
tury; his  only  revenge  is  to  go  a  little  farther 
back  spiritually.  It  is  the  same  with  his  work. 
He  is  content  to  take  as  his  raw  materials  the 
Hammersmith  street,  or  the  chimneys  of  the  near- 
est power-house,  or  the  electric  cranes  on  the  river- 
side. He  does  not  regret  the  existence  of  John 
Smith,  the  trade  unionist,  or  complain  that  he 
does  not  spell  himself  Jehan  and  belong  to  a 
mediaeval  guild;  but  uses  him,  dirty  collar,  sloppy 
tweeds,  trade  unionism,  and  all — and  somehow 
gets  a  rare  dignity  out  of  him,  while  telling  the 
essential  truth.  Such  a  man  as  Dante  Gabriel 
Rossetti,  both  as  poet  and  painter,  remained  a 
Victorian  with  a  squint,  despite  his  laboured  efforts 
at  archaism,  because  he  tried  to  keep  one  eye  on 
the  nineteenth  century  and   one   on  the   twelfth. 


94  ALL  AND  SUNDRY 

Mr.  Brangwyn  has  both  eyes  on  the  twentieth, 
but  his  soul  is  in  the  twelfth.  He  is  one  with  the 
old  masters,  because  he  is  so  vitally  of  his  own 
time. 

The  Academy  has  honoured  itself  by  honouring 
the  least  academic  of  living  artists.  But  one 
wonders  how  Mr.  Brangwyn  feels  in  that  gallery; 
he  is  like  some  great  wolf-hound  on  view  among 
a  lot  of  sleek  Italian  greyhounds.  His  whole 
outlook  on  art  is  the  very  antithesis  of  the  average 
E.A.'s.  The  Academy  remains  true  to  its  origin. 
It  was  founded  chiefly  with  the  view  of  giving  a 
status  to  those  who  supplied  a  British  demand 
for  pretty  things,  or  who  painted  the  portraits 
of  the  British  aristocracy;  and  it  has  so  little 
departed  from  that  rather  servile  tradition  that 
nine  people  out  of  ten  think  of  an  Academician 
as  necessarily  a  successful  painter  of  easel  pic- 
tures, and  were  considerably  astonished  when  an 
architect  was  chosen  President.  (Perhaps  not  alto- 
gether unnaturally,  architecture  was  not  commonly 
conceived  as  an  art.)  This  attitude  is  the  culmina- 
tion of  a  movement  now  more  than  four  hundred 
years  old.  Mr.  Chesterton  has  acutely  pointed 
out  the  essential  difference  between  the  objects 
of  art  before  and  after  the  Renaissance.  Mediaeval 
art  was  popular;  the  blaze  of  colour  inside  a 
cathedral  and  the  riot  of  fantastic  shape  outside 


MR.  FRANK  BRANGWYN,  R.A.  95 

were  the  work  of  artists  who  had  Tom,  Dick,  and 
Harry  in  view;  they  were  not  meant  to  please 
a  small  and  specialised  class,  but  to  appeal  to 
everybody.  They  were  the  uncommon  man's  gift 
to  common  men.  But  with  the  Renaissance  there 
came,  by  a  variety  of  incidental  causes,  a  change 
in  feeling.  The  artist,  like  the  soldier,  became 
a  true  mercenary.  Art  became  an  aristocratic 
and  exclusive  concern.  Its  appeal  narrowed;  it 
forsook  the  streets  for  the  mansions;  it  spent  on 
a  nobleman's  goblet  the  pains  that  once  went  to 
the  decoration  of  a  market  cross.  In  succeeding 
centuries  we  have  fine  landscapes,  marvellous  por- 
traits, silver-work  and  faience  that  are  a  delight 
to  the  connoisseur;  but  there  is  a  definite  good- 
bye to  the  greatest  in  things  that  cannot  go  into 
a  remover's  van. 

Mr.  Brangwyn  is  truly  of  the  mediaevals  because 
to  the  centre  of  his  being  he  rebels  against  this 
limitation  of  art.  He  painted  easel  pictures  to 
make  money  and  amuse  himself;  he  sometimes 
paints  them  still  for  amusement.  He  delights  in 
etching,  which  more  than  amuses  him.  But  his 
real  heart  is  in  the  art  that  cannot  be  kept  in  a 
portfolio  or  used  to  give  a  false  note  to  a  dining- 
room.  He  is  above  all,  and  in  the  widest  sense, 
a  decorator,  and  there  must  be  moments  in  his 
life  when  he  regrets  that  he  was  born  six  centuries 


96  ALL  AND  SUNDRY 

too  late  to  do  the  best  that  is  in  him.  His 
imagination  glows  with  visions  of  real  English 
cities  (not  the  ordinary  aggregation  of  slum  and 
suburb),  ruled  by  men  jealous  for  their  beauty  as 
well  as  for  their  wealth,  filled  with  enthusiasm  for 
the  common  life,  in  which  art  would  take  its  place 
as  no  extraneous  thing,  but  as  an  impulse  govern- 
ing every  corporate  activity.  In  such  cities  it 
would  indeed  be  well  that  the  chief  citizens  should 
delight  in  filling  their  houses  with  the  best  that 
the  easel  painter  could  produce;  there  is  a  legiti- 
mate domestic  and  intimate  side  to  art;  but  the 
true  work  of  a  great  genius  would  be,  as  in  the 
distant  past,  for  Everyman;  work  which  could 
not  serve  as  gambling  counters  for  the  speculator, 
or  certificates  of  taste  for  the  millionaire,  but 
would  remain  for  centuries  a  reminder  to  citizens 
of  the  glories  of  their  past. 

It  is  the  enormous  insensibility  of  his  country- 
men to  art  as  a  vital  thing,  touching  life  at  all 
points,  that  makes  Mr.  Brangwyn's  considerable 
world  success  not  a  little  ironical  to  him.  There 
is  a  constant  and  lucrative  market  for  the  pictures 
he  does  not  want  to  paint,  since  the  days  are 
long  past  when  a  five-pound  note  was  of  conse- 
quence to  the  self-taught  artist  who  had  roughed 
it  before  the  mast,  and  vagabondised  it  in  many 
remote  parts  of  the   globe.     But  there  is   little 


MR.  FEANK  BRANGWYN,  E.A.  97 

demand  in  this  country  for  the  work  he  would 
like  to  do  for  it.  With  a  half-humorous  sigh  he 
will  talk  to  you  of  proffered  foreign  commissions, 
and  of  the  English  orders  that  so  seldom  come. 
England  only  wants  of  Mr.  Brangwyn  what  Mr. 
Brangwyn  does  not  want  to  do  for  England. 
The  English  shopkeeper  who  controls  our  munici- 
palities probably  never  heard  his  name;  in  any 
case  knows  him  only  as  a  picture  painter.  He 
cannot  complain  of  want  of  success.  His  name 
is  respected  by  the  print  sellers,  at  Christie's,  and 
everywhere  where  pictures  are  sold.  It  is  no  case 
of  a  neglected  genius;  only  the  sadder  case  of 
a  misused  one.  For  Frank  Brangwyn,  properly 
employed,  would  be  less  an  individual  painter  than 
an  institution.  He  would  be  a  master  on  the  old 
plan,  with  a  host  of  pupils  carrying  out  his  de- 
signs. In  such  a  capacity  he  might  have  filled 
the  public  buildimgs  of  England  with  feasts  of 
form  and  colour  which  would  have  brought  us 
pilgrims  from  everywhere  for  centuries  to  come. 
Instead,  much  of  his  best  work  can  only  be  seen 
abroad,  and  perhaps  the  best  of  all  remains  undone. 


DEAN  INGE 

There  are  few  more  striking  objects  than  a  Dean 
in  Ms  curious  hat  and  breeches,  which  tempt 
the  speculative  mind  to  Teufelsdrockhian  lines  of 
thought  that  need  not  be  here  specified.  Yet  when 
you  see  the  Very  Eeverend  William  Ralph  Inge, 
Dean  of  St.  PauPs,  you  think  of  him  first  as  a 
very  remarkable  human  being,  and  only  secondly 
as  a  dignitary  of  the  Church.  It  is  not  often  that 
a  conspicuously  clothed  figure  is  so  completely  can- 
celled by  the  force  of  the  face. 

It  is  not  an  animated  face;  indeed,  its  singular 
impressiveness  is  chiefly  due  to  the  absence  of  any 
positive  feeling.  Its  owner  seems  to  have  as 
little  relation  to  the  life  around  him  as  if  he  were 
a  ghost.  In  its  curious  mingling  of  lifelessness 
and  significance  the  face  suggests  not  so  much 
flesh  and  blood  as  wood  carved  by  some  great 
craftsman  for  a  mediaBval  cathedral.  One  used 
to  see  such  faces  decorating  the  choir-stalls  in  the 
great  Flemish  churches — the  saints  on  one  side, 
the  persecutors  of  the  Church  on  the  other.  On 
which  side  this  particular  face  should  appear 
might  seem  a  little  doubtful.  There  have  been 
saints   who   looked   much   the   same,    saints    who 


DEAN  INGE  99 

went  doggedly  to  the  lions  not  for  any  human 
reason,  but  over  some  question  of  mere  theological 
parsing — not  for  the  Word,  but  for  the  due  gram- 
matical expression  of  the  Word.  And  there  have 
been  saint-killers  who  looked  much  the  same,  men 
who  slew  not  because  they  were  brutes,  but  because 
they  were  pedants. 

It  is,  in  short,  the  face  of  a  quiet  fanatic,  whose 
main  trouble  is  that  he  has  nothing  very  obvious 
to  be  fanatical  about.  Dean  Inge  is  certainly  no 
fanatic  in  religious  matters.  Therein  he  tends 
to  rather  extreme  latitudinarianism.  He  is  dis- 
posed to  look  for  truth  beyond  the  limits  of  the 
Christian  doctrines,  and  has  expressed  a  respect 
for  the  faiths  of  the  East  which  would  have 
infallibly  brought  him  into  trouble  half  a  century 
ago.  It  would  be  an  exaggeration  to  say  with 
Mr.  Chesterton  (in  his  haste)  that  **he  holds  a 
high  seat  in  that  modem  Parliament  of  religions 
where  all  believers  respect  each  other's  unbelief,'' 
and  that  he  has  **  absently-minded  strayed  into 
the  wrong  Continent  and  the  wrong  creed."  But 
that  such  a  thing  could  be  said  of  the  Dean  at 
all  may  serve  to  indicate  the  breadth  of  his 
religious  views. 

But  fanaticism  that  is  in  the  bone  will  out  in 
the  flesh,  and  the  Dean  is  undoubtedly  a  fanatic 
in  things  political  and  sociological.    He  hates  with 


100  ALL  AND  SUNDRY 

a  consuming  hatred  something  that  he  calls  **  de- 
mocracy." He  has  denounced  in  withering  terms 
those  of  his  brethren  who  toy  with  Socialism. 
They  are  ^^ Court  Chaplains  of  King  Demos/'  and 
worshippers  of  *^the  silliest  of  all  fetishes"  that 
man  has  ever  set  up.  The  ^'masses"  get  no 
flattery  from  Dean  Inge.  ''Any  dead  dog,"  he 
says,  ''can  float  with  the  stream";  he  prefers  to 
go  against  the  modem  current  of  majority- worship. 
"Men  in  masses,"  he  tells  us,  "are  nearly  always 
guided  by  selfish  interests."  "If  we  ally  our- 
selves with  mankind  in  the  lump  we  ally  ourselves 
with  mankind  at  the  worst."  He  looks  on  the 
British  working  man  as  inspired  with  a  desire  to 
"loot  the  accumulations  of  Queen  Victoria's  reign," 
and  warns  him  constantly  that  the  Chinese  and 
Japanese,  working  longer  hours  for  much  less 
pay,  will  "cut  us  out."  Democracy  is  "wasteful, 
inefficient,  and  generally  corrupt."  Democratic 
governments  "yield  before  every  agitation  and 
pay  blackmail  to  every  conspiracy,"  and  under 
them  those  who  pay  taxes  are  "systematically 
pillaged."  Finally,  he  thinks  there  is  a  danger 
that  the  working  classes,  spoiled  as  they  have 
been,  flattered  and  deceived,  will  "become  vicious 
and  upset  the  coach." 

Now  all  this    (a   certain  distinction   of  diction 
apart)  sounds  very  much  like  the  nonsense  talked 


DEAN  INGE  ipi 

by  the  ordinary  flustered  tradesman  or  country 
gentleman  in  a  time  of  Labour  **unresf  If  one 
did  not  know  the  Dean,  and  had  no  idea  of  the 
very  deep  things  he  has  discussed  with  a  quite 
unusual  clarity  and  discernment,  one  might  diag- 
nose a  panic  fear  for  the  Very  Eeverend  dinner, 
or  the  Very  Eeverend  stipend,  or  the  Very  Eev- 
erend dividends.  But  Dean  Inge  is  wholly  dis- 
interested. He  cares  nothing  about  money,  food, 
or  society;  lives  like  an  anchorite;  is  a  man  used 
to  severe  thought,  of  quite  masculine  intellect, 
and  perfectly  honest  and  fearless.  He  must  mean 
something  more  than  the  ordinary  member  of  the 
Anti-Socialist  Union.     What  is  if? 

The  Dean  seems  to  suffer  from  two  disabilities. 
The  first  is  that  he  has  lived  nearly  all  his  life 
in  rooms  at  Eton  and  Oxford  and  at  the  Deanery, 
where  he  has  never  come  into  touch  with  the 
average  of  mankind.  It  is  true,  I  believe,  that 
he  was  for  a  short  time  a  parish  clergyman  some- 
where in  Kensington,  and  that  he  even  held  a 
weekly  class  for  chambermaids  at  the  Hyde  Park 
Hotel.  What  he  made  of  the  chambermaids  and 
what  the  chambermaids  made  of  him,  only  he 
and  the  chambermaids  may  say.  His  interest  in 
them  seems  to  belie  the  impression  most  people 
have  gathered  from  his  St.  PauPs  sermons,  of 
a  man  verging  on  the  inhuman.     But  it  remains 


102  ALL  AND  SUNDRY 

true  that  on  the  Wli6l6  Dean  Inge's  contact  with 
common  mankind  is  slight,  and  of  course  his  deaf- 
ness is  for  him  one  dividing  wall  the  more.  Forced, 
then,  to  judge  largely  by  printed  matter,  it  is 
hardly  surprising  that  he  is  less  than  just  to 
the  working  man;  the  best  part  of  the  working 
man  is  not  vocal.  But  the  main  trouble  is  that 
the  Dean  really  does  not  know  what  democracy 
means.  I  should  hesitate  to  say  such  a  thing  of 
such  a  man  did  his  numerous  references  to  the 
subject  leave  any  room  for  doubt.  He  always 
speaks  of  democracy  as  a  system  of  government 
actually  existing  in  England,  though  he,  himself, 
the  Dean  of  St.  PauPs,  is  a  living  proof  to  the 
contrary.  For  if  a  plebiscite  were  taken  to-mor- 
row on  the  question:  **Do  you  sincerely  wish  that 
William  Ralph  Inge  shall  continue  to  dress  in  a 
singular  kind  of  silk  hat,  with  other  queer  appur- 
tenances to  match,  or  would  you  prefer  that  some- 
thing else  were  done  with  the  money  f  is  it 
conceivable  that  there  would  be  an  affirmative 
majority? 

I  will  therefore  disregard  all  the  tirades  against 
something  which  may  be  very  bad,  but  which  is 
clearly  not  democracy,  and  turn  to  points  on  which 
Dean  Inge  has  something  to  say  really  valuable. 
He  does  stand,  in  some  imperfect,  warped,  but 
not  unintelligible  way,  for  one  very  excellent  (and 


DEAN  INGE  103 

very  democratic)  ideal,  the  dignity  of  man  as 
man.  He  is  against  the  herd  theory  of  mankind; 
he  asserts  the  majesty  of  the  individual  soul. 
Eunning  through  all  his  diatribes  against  Social- 
ism is  the  one  sound  thought  expressed  in  his 
homely  metaphor:  *' Socialism  seeks  to  make  the 
sty  more  important  than  the  pig,  whereas  the  pig 
is  more  important  than  the  sty.'*  Men  are  not 
to  be  saved  materially  or  spiritually  by  platoons, 
as  Charlemagne's  Saxons  were  baptised.  There 
are  no  classes  and  no  masses,  only  men  honest 
and  dishonest,  industrious  and  lazy;  and  no  scheme 
of  ** reform,''  however  cunningly  contrived,  will 
succeed  unless  the  individual  is  touched  to  finer 
things.  It  is  at  this  point  that  the  famous  ** gloom" 
of  the  Dean  really  does  come  in.  He  has  no 
faith  in  the  average  man;  no  faith  in  him  as 
he  is,  and  little  faith  in  his  capacity  to  become 
something  better.  There  is  a  touch  of  the  Cal- 
vinist  in  this  ultra-liberal  Churchman;  he  seems 
to  regard  the  mass  as  spiritual  as  well  as  economic 
Gibeonites.  It  would  be  interesting  to  have  a 
sermon  from  him  on  the  Penitent  Thief.  What- 
ever he  might  admit  or  deny  in  theory,  practically 
he  believes  that  Christians  will  never  be  more  than 
a  minority.  He  seems,  indeed,  convinced  that  the 
greater  part  of  mankind,  if  not  better  dead,  would 
be  better  unborn;  on  that  side  of  him  he  is  dis- 


104  ALL  AND  SUNDEY 

tinctly  the  *  insect  on  the  leaf  pronouncing  on 
the  too  much  life  among  his  hungry  brothers  in 
the  dust." 

It  is  not  a  very  hopeful  doctrine,  or  for  that 
matter  a  very  Christian  one.  But  the  Dean  him- 
self, well  understood,  is  neither  un-christian  nor 
a  pessimist;  and,  though  perhaps  a  rather  de- 
pressing influence,  he  is  no  unhealthy  one.  He 
only  over-states  truths  which  are  habitually  under- 
stated just  now.  Many  people  have  got  into  the 
habit  of  thinking  that  you  can  get  out  of  a  really 
well  contrived  mill  more  than  you  put  in,  that 
zero  multiplied  by  a  million  makes  a  good  round 
sum,  and  that  a  good  crop  of  figs  may  be  confi- 
dently expected  from  well-cultivated  thistles.  Dean 
Inge,  with  much  irrelevance  and  a  rather  irritating 
shrillness,  simply  points  out  that  it  will  not  do. 
That  is  the  essence  of  his  message;  it  is  negative, 
but  not  unimportant. 

Unfortunately  he  has  little  sense  of  humour; 
he  suffers  more  than  most  men  from  the  reporter 
who  wrenches  emphatic  sentences  from  their  con- 
text; and  thus  the  value  of  his  contribution  is 
considerably  diminished.  It  is  a  pity.  For  he 
really  has  stuff  in  him,  and  courage  of  his  kind 
is  rare  in  this  rather  flabby  age. 


SIR  JOHN  SIMON 

To  every  successful  lawyer-politician  there  arrives 
a  day  when  he  has  to  make  a  final  choice  between 
the  two  careers.  From  the  hill  of  his  eminence 
he  can  see  on  the  one  side  the  narrow  but  rich 
domain  of  legal  preferment,  with  its  dignity  and 
security,  but  also  with  its  dulness;  on  the  other 
lies  a  mysterious  uncharted  region,  half  Golconda 
and  half  Golgotha,  guarded  by  enchantments  like 
those  of  the  Arabian  tales,  a  region  where  the 
stout  adventurer  with  the  proper  clue  may  gain 
fierce  delights  and  more  than  royal  splendours, 
but  where  also  a  wrong  word  or  a  false  step  may 
turn  him  into  a  black  stone,  or  a  miserable  one- 
eyed  calender,  scorned  and  pitied  of  all. 

Such  a  day  arrived  to  Sir  John  Simon  in  the 
early  summer  of  1915.  After  a  prodigious  career 
at  the  bar  and  the  kind  of  success  in  political 
law-ofl5cership  which  proves  nothing,  the  parting 
of  the  ways  lay  before  him.  A  man  of  just  over 
forty,  he  could  have  the  Woolsack  for  the  asking, 
and  spend  the  rest  of  his  life  in  splendid  mediocrity. 
Or  he  could  choose  a  political  post  subject  to  all 
the  dangers  and  vicissitudes  of  a  specially  dis- 
turbed and  uncertain  epoch.     The  confidence  with 

106 


106  ALL  AND  SUNDRY 

which  the  young  and  comparatively  untried  states- 
man scorned  delights  and  chose  laborious  days 
may  or  may  not  have  been  justified.  But,  what- 
ever else  the  decision  meant,  it  implied  in  Sir 
John  Simon  ambitions  of  the  very  highest.  In 
taking  the  Home  Secretaryship  under  the  first 
Coalition  he  did  in  effect  proclaim  himself  a  future 
claimant  of  the  Premiership.  It  is,  therefore,  as 
a  possible  future  Prime  Minister,  and  by  no  lower 
standard,  that  we  have  to  appraise  as  best  we 
can  the  qualities  of  a  rather  enigmatic  figure. 

It  is  almost  a  commonplace  to  describe  Sir  John 
Simon  as  a  rather  slighter  Asquith,  and  undeni- 
ably the  comparison  is  in  some  important  par- 
ticulars just.  Both  men  are  distinguished  by  a 
singular  clarity  of  brain,  by  conspicuous  lucidity 
of  expression,  and  by  a  rigid  parsimony  of  phrase. 
Though  acute,  they  are  by  no  means  great  original 
thinkers;  they  are  content,  lawyer-like,  to  assume 
first  principles,  and  treat  eminently  arguable  prop- 
ositions as  if  they  possessed  the  authority  of  the 
law  delivered  from  Sinai.  Neither  is  disposed  to 
adventure;  an  essential  conservatism  underlies  the 
Radicalism  of  Sir  John  Simon  no  less  than  the 
Whiggism  of  Mr.  Asquith.  Like  Mr.  Asquith, 
Sir  John  Simon  would  never  consciously  bring 
about  a  revolution;  but,  if  a  revolution  came  his 
way,   he    would   probably   display   Mr.   Asquith 's 


SIR  JOHN  SIMON  107 

gift  of  concealing  its  character  under  a  cloak  of 
studious  moderation.  Both  men  shun  emotion- 
alism as  the  last  vulgarity;  and  in  both  this 
fastidiousness  is  not  solely  a  matter  of  taste;  it 
comes  partly  of  temperamental  deficiency. 

Like  his  elder,  Sir  John  Simon  was  an  instant 
success  in  politics,  and  in  law  came  to  the  front 
still  more  rapidly  than  his  elder.  At  Oxford  he 
was  recognised  as  a  youth  with  a  great  future. 
The  story  goes  that  he  and  Lord  Birkenhead 
tossed  up  which  party  they  should  join,  since  no 
party  could  be  big  enough  to  hold  both.  It  was 
the  same  at  the  bar;  young  Simon  simply  came, 
saw,  and  conquered.  Within  a  very  few  years  of 
his  call  the  British  Government  was  his  client, 
and  his  income  was  only  exceeded  by  one  or  two 
men  very  much  his  senior.  The  monotonous  tale 
of  almost  mechanical  success  was  repeated  in  the 
House  of  Conamons.  Less  than  four  years  after 
he  came  in  for  Walthamstow  on  the  great  Liberal 
wave  of  1906,  Sir  John,  still  well  on  the  sunny 
side  of  forty,  was  appointed  Solicitor-General. 
It  all  reads  very  much  like  a  summary  of  Mr. 
Asquith's  earlier  history.  Add  that,  like  Mr. 
Asquith,  Sir  John  comes  from  a  Nonconformist 
stock — his  father  was  a  Congregational  minister — 
and  the  parallel  is  superficially  complete. 

But  difference  in  degree  often  amounts  to  dif- 


108  ALL  AND  SUNDEY 

ference  in  kind,  and  such  a  difference  exists  in 
this  case.  Sir  John  Simon  stands  to  his  leader 
in  the  relation  of  a  ** school  picture^'  to  a  great 
master;  the  very  points  of  resemblance  only  em- 
phasise the  gulf  that  divides  the  two.  It  is  quite 
true  that  in  some  respects  the  younger  man  has 
the  advantage  of  the  elder.  He  has  earned  fees 
such  as  Mr.  Asquith  never  pocketed.  Mr.  Asquith 
was  never  an  advocate  of  quite  the  first  class, 
and  an  advocate  of  the  first  class  Sir  John  Simon 
undeniably  is.  Working  with  methods  quite  dif- 
ferent from  Sir  Edward  Carson's,  he  has  the 
same  sort  of  power  over  judges,  juries,  and  wit- 
nesses. His  instinct  for  the  weak  side  of  an 
opponent's  case  is  infallible;  he  has  a  great  gift 
of  plausibility;  and,  despite  the  gentleness  of  his 
manner,  he  can  be  ruthlessness  itself  when  he 
likes.  The  almost  preternatural  gravity  of  his 
demeanour,  coupled  with  a  singularly  winning  man- 
ner, gently  insinuating  without  a  touch  of  servility, 
has  no  doubt  helped.  Without  attaching  to  de- 
portment all  the  importance  assigned  to  it  by 
Lord  Chesterfield  and  Mr.  Turveydrop,  we  should 
be  foolish  to  deny  to  externals  their  full  weight. 
^*If,"  says  Halifax,  **the  judges  on  the  Bench 
should,  instead  of  their  furs,  which  signify  gravity 
and  bespeak  respect,  be  clothed  like  the  jockeys 
at  Newmarket,  or  wear  jack-boots  and  Steenkirks, 


SIR  JOHN  SIMON  109 

they  would  not  in  reality  have  less  law,  but  it 
would  be  a  great  while  before  mankind  would 
think  it  possible  to  receive  justice  from  men  so 
accoutred/'  Some  part  of  the  high  respect  paid 
to  Sir  John  Simon's  learning  and  intellect  may 
be  the  effect,  perhaps,  of  his  precocious  sobriety. 
He  looks  wiser  than  any  man  is  likely  to  be,  and, 
though  he  smiles  on  all,  he  enjoys  the  mysterious 
power  so  often  attaching  to  a  man  who  is  never 
surprised  into  a  laugh. 

Though  a  great  advocate,  Sir  John  Simon  is 
hardly  a  great  lawyer.  Neither,  it  may  be  said,  is 
Mr.  Asquith.  But  there  is  this  difference  between 
the  two  men.  One  feels  that  Sir  John  Simon 
has  got  the  most  out  of  himself,  while  the  best 
in  Mr.  Asquith  is  still  undeveloped.  It  can  hardly 
be  doubted  that  Mr.  Asquith,  had  he  kept  to  law, 
might  have  rivalled  the  highest  reputations.  The 
faculty  which  has  made  him  so  great  a  Parlia- 
mentarian of  his  own  special  and  peculiar  class 
would  have  enabled  him,  had  politics  not  claimed 
him,  to  go  down  to  history  as  a  great  judge.  Mr. 
Asquith  has,  moreover,  many  of  the  qualities  of 
a  great  man.  But  somehow,  greatness  of  any 
kind  is  difficult  to  associate  with  Sir  John  Simon. 
Carlyle  would  have  seized  on  him  as  the  type  of 
the  compact,  **most  articulate,''  small  man,  whom 
he  used  to  compare  with  his  favourite  *^  question- 


110  ALL  AND  SUNDRY 

able"  Mirabeaus  and  Dantons.  There  is  certainly 
nothing  in  Sir  John  Simon  round  which  to  weave 
a  legend.  He  is  far  too  respectable.  No  one 
would  say  of  him,  as  Bardolph  of  Falstaff  **  Would 
I  were  with  him,  whether  in  Heaven  or  in  Hell.'' 
The  very  industrious  apprentice  gets  most  of  the 
good  things  of  life,  but  not  all,  and  one  thing 
he  often  misses  is  the  hearty  love  of  his  fellow- 
men.  If  things  go  right  with  him.  Sir  John  Simon 
will  no  doubt  have  a  large  and  interested  retinue. 
But  unless  he  changes  more  than  would  seem  pos- 
sible, he  is  likely  to  prove  a  very  indifferent  leader 
of  a  forlorn  hope.  It  used  to  be  said  that  in  Fox's 
time  the  Whig  party  went  to  the  House  of  Com- 
mons in  a  four-wheeler.  The  quip  was  meant  to 
express  contempt  for  the  feebleness  of  the  Oppo- 
sition, but  a  subtle  kind  of  compliment  to  its 
sincerity  and  solidarity  was  unconsciously  implied; 
the  four  seats  were  occupied  by  four  men,  who 
thoroughly  liked  and  trusted  each  other,  and  were 
prepared  to  sink  or  swim  together.  If  Sir  John 
Simon  were  at  the  head  of  a  Liberal  party  in 
similar  straits  the  members  would  arrive  in  at 
least  two   separate   taxi-cabs. 

For  Sir  John  Simon — though  a  keen  politician 
and  an  honest  one  (did  not  the  resignation  over 
conscription  prove  at  least  that?) — conspicuously 
lacks  the  qualities  that  inspire  a  warm  personal 


SIR  JOHN  SIMON  111 

loyalty.  It  is,  indeed,  a  marked  deficiency  in 
Liberal  leaders  generally  since  Mr.  Lloyd  George 
became — whatever  he  has  become.  The  division  of 
labour  was  long  carried  to  an  unwholesome  length. 
It  was  Mr.  George  *s  special  department  to  tickle 
the  ears  of  the  groundlings;  and  rather  foolishly 
that  department  was  viewed  with  some  degree  of 
contempt  by  men  of  the  Asquith  school.  They 
looked  on  eloquence  of  the  Limehouse  kind  much 
in  the  same  light  as  the  dropping  of  an  aspirate. 
They  over-appreciated  dull  matter,  and  unjustly 
appraised  good  patter:  nay,  more,  they  were  led 
into  the  very  serious  error  of  thinking  that  the 
master  of  patter  must  necessarily  be  as  empty  as 
a  drum  because  he  makes  the  noise  of  one.  They 
forgot  that  an  Alfred  Butt  is  more  easily  supplied 
than  a  Harry  Lauder,  and  that  in  politics,  as 
elsewhere,  one  touch  of  genius  is  worth  much 
respectable  ability.  To  do  the  Conservative  leaders 
justice,  hostility  never  interfered  with  their  artistic 
appreciation  of  Mr.  Lloyd  George's  gifts.  They 
recognised  from  the  first  his  value  as  an  asset. 
It  was  a  cynical  recognition,  of  course:  they  were 
only  thinking  of  him  as  the  race-course  comedian 
who  keeps  the  crowd  in  a  roar,  while  prac- 
titioners with  silent  talents  are  going  through  its 
pockets.  But  Mr.  George  was  always  more  ad- 
mired by  his  enemies  than  his  friends,  and  now 


112  ALL  AND  SUNDEY 

they  liave  him — or  is  it  that  he  has  them?  Mr. 
Asquith  would  have  been  better  advised  either  to 
have  bound  Mr.  George  by  hoops  of  steel,  or  to 
have  left  him  a  less  complete  monopoly  in  his 
own  line.  It  is  an  example  of  the  way  in  which 
a  very  astute  and  able  man  may  be  misled  by 
his  own  personal  preferences.  Mr.  Asquith,  tem- 
peramentally unsympathetic  to  the  Georgian  type, 
decided  that  one  was  quite  enough  in  that  genre, 
and  sought  his  other  colleagues  among  men  of 
his  own  intellectual  habit,  forgetting  that  it  takes 
all  sorts  to  make  a  world.  Thus  it  arrived  that  in 
a  situation  where  popular  appeal  was  of  the  first 
importance  the  orthodox  Liberal  party  was  led 
by  a  singularly  monotonous  group  of  men,  not 
one  of  whom  had  the  power  of  swaying  an  audi- 
ence, though  each  was  heard  with  respect  in  the 
House  of  Commons.  Sir  John  Simon,  Mr. 
McKenna,  Mr.  Runciman,  Mr.  Samuel,  Mr.  Asquith 
himself,  had  in  common  one  deficiency:  there  was 
not  a  vibrant  note  in  their  whole  register. 

Apart  from  his  chief,  Sir  John  Simon  is  by  far 
the  most  notable  of  the  company,  and  probably 
he  alone  offers  the  possibility  of  any  considerable 
development.  Under  the  stimulus  of  adversity, 
reserve  powers  which  may  have  been  atrophied 
by  early  and  easy  success  will  perhaps  declare 
themselves.    So  far  he  has  only  mastered  a  party 


SIR  JOHN  SIMON  113 

brief;  in  the  cold  shades  he  may  be  led  to  dis- 
cover a  true  gospel,  and  the  man  to  preach  it. 
For  the  moment  he  stands  only  for  a  great  but 
incomplete  personal  success,  represented  by  a 
resounding  forensic  fame,  a  political  reputation 
far  less  assured,  and  a  handsome  little  country 
place  near  Banbury,  where  he  sees  the  few  inti- 
mates who  know  the  real  man.  That  real  man 
will  remain  to  the  ordinary  public  a  slightly  dis- 
trusted mystery  until  he  begins  to  develop  a  great 
enthusiasm.  Perhaps,  after  all,  he  has  not  had 
time.    Under  fifty  one  is  still  young. 


SIE  ALBERT  STANLEY 

It  is  commonly  imputed  to  the  Englislmian,  some- 
times as  a  defect  but  oftener  as  a  virtue,  that 
though  he  changes  his  skies  his  mind  and  habits 
are  unalterable.  He  is  never,  we  are  told,  so 
much  an  Englishman  as  when  away  from  England, 
and  the  longer  he  remains  abroad  the  more  stub- 
bornly he  clings  to  every  jot  and  tittle  of  the 
unwritten  law  of  the  English. 

But  however  true  this  may  be,  it  is  by  no  means 
universally  true.  Indeed,  a  certain  type  of  Eng- 
lishman has  always  been  noted  for  the  ease  with 
which  he  responds  to  environment,  and  often  even 
overdoes  the  Roman  when  he  happens  to  be  in 
Rome.  Houston  Stewart  Chamberlain  is  by  no 
means  a  solitary  example  of  the  denationalised 
Briton.  Americans  reserve  their  sarcasm  for  the 
** Britisher"  who  insists  on  demanding  Wiltshire 
bacon  in  Chicago,  and  calling  for  Bass's  ale  in 
Milwaukee.  But  they  might  exploit  as  rich  a 
field  of  satire  in  the  immigrant  who  becomes  in 
two  years  a  greater  hustler  than  Mr.  Henry  Ford, 
and  more  slangy  than  Mr.  George  Ade.  The 
Englishman  in  America  either  lives  in  perpetual 
rebellion  against  the  American  idea  or  surrenders 

114 


SIR  ALBERT  STANLEY  115 

to  it  unconditionally.  Sir  Albert  Stanley,  quite 
naturally,  belongs  to  the  latter  class.  He  was 
very  young  when  he  was  taken  to  the  United 
States;  he  owes  to  the  State  of  Michigan  most 
of  his  education,  and  all  his  success  in  life;  and 
it  is  rather  as  an  American  than  as  a  Briton  that 
he  must  be  judged.  For  he  speaks  through  the 
nose  a  little,  and  thinks  through  the  nose  a  great 
deal.  His  whole  attitude  to  life  breathes  that 
strange  and  almost  terrifying  simplicity  so  com- 
mon in  the  American  colossus  of  business.  He 
is  absorbed  in  the  contemplation  of  **efi5ciency 
of  organisation"  as  an  end  in  itself.  One  of  his 
admirers  has  called  him  a  **  human  dynamo  gen- 
erating efficiency  kilowatts  at  top  speed.''  A  more 
reverent  mind  might  rather  describe  him  as  one 
of  the  devotees  of  the  modern  faith  of  ** progress," 
which  demands  of  its  holders  a  monastic  concen- 
tration on  one  purpose  and  an  enormous  inno- 
cence regarding  everything  else. 

Sir  Albert  Stanley,  it  is  hardly  necessary  to 
say,  has  no  connection  with  the  Earl  of  Der^y. 
He  belongs  to  an  old  but  obscure  Derbyshire 
family  of  the  name  of  Knathries.  His  father,  on 
going  to  the  United  States,  found  the  name  hard 
for  people  to  spell  and  to  remember,  and  out  of 
consideration  for  American  weakness  adopted  an 
aristocratic  British  cognomen.    Young  Stanley  de- 


116  ALL  AND  SUNDEY 

veloped  with  truly  American  rapidity.  He  was 
almost  a  boy  when  he  undertook  the  organisation 
of  the  tramway  system  of  Detroit,  the  **  pioneer 
city'*  of  electric  traction.  He  was  a  very  young 
man  when  he  was  called  to  a  larger  field  in  the 
State  of  New  Jersey.  He  was  still  quite  a  young 
man  when  he  took  in  hand,  as  the  representative 
of  American  interests,  the  remodelling  of  the  whole 
system  of  underground  travel  in  London.  How 
he  *  linked  up^'  the  tubes  and  shallow  railways 
and  the  omnibus  and  tramway  companies,  by  a 
complicated  process  of  bargaining,  new  construc- 
tion, conversion  and  ^* speeding  up,"  is  now  a 
matter  of  London  and  railway  history.  Kegarded 
simply  as  a  job,  it  was  something  of  a  miracle 
to  bring  about  in  so  short  a  time  so  sweeping 
a  revolution.  In  little  things  as  well  as  great 
the  changes  bore  the  impress  of  an  Americanised 
personality.  The  old  underground  railways  were 
merely  replicas  in  miniature  of  the  great  lines. 
They  were  official  and  starchy  in  their  attitude 
to  the  public.  They  called  their  stations  by  the 
names  of  non-existent  or  obscure  streets,  and  care- 
fully hid  them  away  from  the  countryman  and 
the  foreigner.  They  took  for  granted  a  knowledge 
of  London,  and  made  no  allowance  for  human 
stupidity.  They  never  advertised  the  beauties 
of  the  districts  they  served,  and  seemed  to  care 


SIE  ALBERT  STANLEY  117 

little  whether  they  carried  few  or  many  passengers 
to  **beechy  Bucks"  or  ** orchard  land.'*  The  new 
mind  changed  all  that  with  the  curious  result 
that  Sir  Albert  Stanley  as  a  railway  man  was 
imploring  people  to  ** sleep  in  the  country,"  while 
as  President  of  the  Board  of  Trade  he  was  mak- 
ing it  very  hard  for  them  to  do  so. 

To  Sir  Albert  Stanley's  personal  success  we 
may  pay  a  cheerful  tribute.  He  has  most  emphati- 
cally **made  good."  A  stranger,  almost  a  for- 
eigner, he  has  in  a  few  years  become  one  of  the 
**very  big  men"  of  business  London,  and  during 
a  very  critical  period  he  was,  on  less  obvious 
grounds,  regarded  as  one  of  the  indispensables  of 
Westminster.  As  a  beginner  in  politics,  he  ex- 
ercised more  power  than  any  previous  occupant 
of  his  post,  and  used  it  with  the  decision  of  a 
dictator.  He  was,  of  course,  qualified  by  his 
experience  as  a  railway  director.  In  raising  fares 
by  fifty  per  cent.,  he  knew  well  enough  that,  how- 
ever people  might  grumble,  they  must  pay.  In 
cutting  down  accommodation,  he  had  the  fortifying 
assurance,  from  previous  knowledge,  of  the  com- 
pressibility of  the  human  frame.  A  less  experi- 
enced man  might  have  hesitated  before  the  risk 
of  some  terrible  accident  to  a  packed  suburban 
train  in  a  London  tunnel.  He  knew  that  accidents 
are  so  improbable  that  the  risk  might  well  be  taken. 


118  ALL  AND  SUNDRY 

As  to  the  effect  of  such  conveyance  on  the  health 
of  London — well,  Sir  Albert  Stanley  was  not  in 
Harley  Street  for  other  people's  health,  or  in 
Whitehall  for  his  own;  he  was  there  to  do  a 
certain  job,  and  he  did  it.  He  viewed  a  question 
of  transport  as  an  expert  on  transport,  and  rightly 
estimated  that  British  patriotism  would  stand  a 
very  considerable  pressure  to  the  square  inch. 

It  cannot  be  denied  that  in  raising  fares  and 
decreasing  accommodation  Sir  Albert  Stanley 
showed  great  skill;  no  non-professional  man  could 
have  gone  so  far  past  the  danger-line  without 
disaster.  But  his  failure  in  other  matters — for, 
diplomatic  pretences  notwithstanding,  it  was  failure 
which  led  to  his  singular  withdrawal  from  active 
work  on  the  Board  of  Trade — shows  that  the 
kind  of  ability  which  may  be  sometimes  useful 
in  emergency  is  not  necessarily  the  kind  which 
is  best  adapted  to  the  normal  needs  of  society. 
In  this  case  there  was  a  certain  specialised  talent 
and  little  beyond.  Outside  his  own  small  world 
Sir  Albert  Stanley  was  revealed  as  limited  and 
a  little  puzzle-headed,  and  he  rather  signally  illus- 
trates the  real  defects  of  '* business''  people  in 
office.  The  objection  to  the  ** business  man"  in 
government  is  not  so  much  the  fear  that  he  will 
let  private  interests  influence  him  in  dealing  with 
public  affairs.    It  is  not  so  much  the  possible  bad 


SIR  ALBERT  STANLEY  119 

side  of  him,  but  the  certain  good  side  of  him,  that 
the  public  has  to  fear.  It  is  true  that  the  ancients, 
in  appointing  a  single  god  to  look  after  the  interest 
of  merchants  and  robbers,  showed  much  of  their 
usual  acuteness.  Modern  politeness  has  separated 
the  classes,  but  they  are  not  always  so  sharply 
divided  as  might  be  wished.  Every  trade  is  a  sort 
of  conspiracy  against  the  public,  and  the  huge 
combines  have  a  specially  predatory  character. 
Still,  there  is  something  which  theologians  call 
**the  grace  of  station,''  which  no  doubt  operates 
when  the  great  privateer  takes  charge  of  a  King's 
ship,  and  we  have  no  right  to  assume,  in  the 
absence  of  proof,  that  business  men  will,  as  a 
general  rule,  consciously  take  advantage  of  their 
situation  as  Ministers  of  the  Crown.  The  real 
danger  is  something  much  more  subtle. 

The  business  man  is  necessarily  a  narrow  man, 
and  a  short-sighted  man.  The  greater  business 
man  he  is,  the  more  likely  is  he  to  be  an  unsafe 
guide  in  public  policy.  Even  in  matters  of  his 
own  calling  it  is  the  common  experience  to  find 
him  lacking  in  perspective.  Most  people  know 
to  their  cost  what  it  means  to  trust  the  judgment 
of  a  stockbroker  as  to  permanent  investments. 
There  was  a  time  when  everybody  was  advised 
to  buy  Consols  at  114;  there  was  another  time 
when  Chartered  shares  were  considerd  a  desirable 


120  ALL  AND  SUNDEY 

** lock-up''  at  eight  times  their  face  value;  there 
was  still  another  period  when  ^* anything  foreign'' 
was  pushed  at  the  expense  of  the  most  solid  British 
securities.  Every  business  man,  like  the  Arch- 
bishop of  Canterbury,  was  convinced  of  the  **  neces- 
sity" of  Chinese  labour  in  South  Africa,  only, 
being  quite  without  ** sentimental  nonsense,"  he 
did  not  think  it  ^* regrettable."  And,  at  the  pres- 
ent moment,  there  are  strictly  business  notions 
in  strictly  business  heads  which,  if  adopted,  would 
infallibly  lead  to  great  calamities. 

The  weakness  is  fundamental.  Business  is  con- 
cerned with  but  one  thing — ^profit  more  or  less 
immediate.  What  is  called  long  sight  in  a  busi- 
ness man  ranges  over  a  period  whose  extreme 
limit  is,  perhaps,  forty  or  fifty  years — that  is  to 
say,  a  mere  half-hour  by  the  clock  of  history. 
Statesmanship  is — or  should  be — concerned  as 
much  with  the  future  as  with  the  past  or  the 
present.  Moreover,  the  business  mind  inevitably 
tends  to  waste  in  the  larger  sense,  though  it  may  be 
deeply  concerned  in  apparent  economies.  When 
a  fool  talks  of  a  fire  as  **good  for  trade"  he  is 
only  expressing  crudely  the  business  philosophy 
that  regards  with  such  complacency  that  creation 
of  new  wants  which  is  often  the  equivalent  of 
waste.  It  would  be  good  business  from  this  point 
of  view  to  exhaust  all  the  coal  in  South  Wales 


SIR  ALBERT  STANLEY  121 

in  twenty  years,  and  drain  the  world  of  its  petro- 
leum in  thirty.  It  is  quite  possible,  in  view  of 
the  state  of  things  which  the  war  has  left  in  its 
wake,  that  all  the  energies  of  rulers  will  have 
to  be  bent  on  the  restriction  of  production  in 
certain  undesirable  directions.  But  we  have  the 
whole  business  world  talking  of  the  importance 
of  *  increasing  production''  without  the  smallest 
reference  to  what  is  produced;  they  are  full  of 
** capturing''  this  trade  or  that,  and  preach  an 
accentuation  of  ** efficiency"  on  capitalistic  lines 
as  if  the  industrial  system  of  the  nineteenth  cen- 
tury were  necessarily  immortal. 

That  Sir  Albert  Stanley  has  much  of  this  sim- 
plicity was  shown  by  his  fathering  of  the  once 
much-discussed  British  Trade  Corporation  scheme, 
which  was  unkindly  described  by  a  Member  of  the 
House  of  Commons  as  a  string  of  bucket-shops 
to  be  given  control  of  our  commerce.  It  is  not 
an  uncommon  thing  for  the  great  business  man 
to  act  first  and  think  afterwards;  Sir  Albert 
Stanley  certainly  did  so  in  this  case.  There  was 
assuredly  no  sinister  intent  behind  his  advocacy; 
but  the  cobbler  retains  always  his  belief  that  there 
is  nothing  like  leather,  and  it  is  to  be  assumed 
that  the  President  of  the  Board  of  Trade  was 
genuinely  surprised  that  even  the  House  of  Com- 
mons was  appalled  at  the  naked  character  of  this 


122  ALL  AND  SUNDEY 

scheme  of  capitalistic  exploitation.  But  one  point 
is  worth  noting;  he  had  hypnotised  the  Cabinet 
into  accepting  it.  That  illustrates  one  of  the  great 
dangers  of  the  clever  business  man  in  office.  He 
is  seldom  wanting  in  a  crude  and  materialistic  sort 
of  patriotism;  he  is  never  deficient  in  ideas  of 
a  kind;  he  is  usually  masterful  in  character;  and 
there  is  a  real  risk  of  his  dominating  men  more 
inert  and  less  contriving,  unless  they  are  fortified 
by  what  he  chiefly  lacks,  a  grip  on  first  principles. 
Every  illusion  brings  its  appropriate  penalty. 
And  there  is  no  greater  illusion  than  the  current 
notion  that  the  hand  that  rocks  the  cradle  of 
a  combine  is  the  hand. to  rule  the  world. 


ME.  F.  S.  OLIVER 

**SiB,''  said  Dr.  Johnson  to  a  dullard,  **I  can 
supply  you  with  an  argument;  I  cannot  furnish 
you  with  an  understanding.^' 

The  quotation  may  serve  to  indicate  the  use- 
fulness of  Mr.  Frederick  Scott  Oliver  to  the  party 
which,  on  the  whole,  commands  what  respect  he 
has  to  spare  for  the  mere  politician.  From  time 
to  time  he  suppUes  the  Unionists  with  quite  ex- 
cellent arguments,  which  they  use  as  bricks  to 
throw  at  their  opponents.  But  the  bricks,  once 
thrown,  have  served  their  purpose.  No  attempt 
is  made  to  turn  them  to  constructive  uses.  It 
would  be  unfair  to  judge  the  brick-maker  by  these 
stray  products.  For  a  reasonable  appraisement 
one  must  turn  to  the  modest  but  far  from  jerry- 
built  temple  of  philosophy  which  Mr.  Oliver  has 
himself  erected.  In  other  words,  one  must  read 
his  excellent  **  Alexander  Hamilton  *'  and  his  better- 
known  but  much  less  noteworthy  war-book,  *^  Or- 
deal by  Battle.'' 

What  are  Keats?  Who,  I  seem  to  hear,  is 
Mr.  F.  S.  Oliver?  The  question  sounds  natural 
or  grotesque,  according  to  the  place  in  which  it 
is  asked.     Mr.  Oliver  is  no  recluse,  but  he  does 

123 


124  ALL  AND  SUNDRY 

not  seek  notoriety,  and  is  both  very  well  and 
very  little  known.  He  is  warmly  esteemed  in 
certain  small  sets  whose  opinion  he  values,  but  he 
cares  very  little  for  the  world  at  large.  In  one 
sense  he  is  a  curiosity:  a  barrister  who  seldom 
loses  an  opportunity  of  denouncnig  lawyers,  and  a 
business  man  (he  is  a  director  of  Debenham's  and 
other  companies)  who  writes  excellent  English.  Of 
good  middle-class  birth,  he  was  educated  in  the 
most  expensive  English  fashion,  and  has  always 
moved  in  one  or  two  of  the  innumerable  sub- 
divisions of  the  *^besf  people.  Among  military 
men  his  acquaintance  is  large;  he  was  an  intimate 
and  confidant  of  the  late  Lord  Roberts.  One  can 
quite  understand  the  affection  inspired  by  **the 
best  little  great  good  man  that  ever  girded  a 
sword  by  his  side.''  But,  indeed,  Mr.  Oliver  seems 
to  have  all  the  student's  fervour  for  the  mili- 
tary caste  generally.  He  is  almost  an  English 
Treitschke  in  his  sedentary  enthusiasm  for  sol- 
diers and  soldiering. 

But  he  has  also  his  own  literary  and  journalistic 
set — amiable,  not  unthoughtful,  quite  genteel  peo- 
ple who  think  Lord  Milner  the  greatest  of  modern 
statesmen,  and  writhe  in  secret  over  the  political 
misery  that  gives  them  a  bed-fellow  like  Mr.  Lloyd 
George.  At  Trinity  he  made  the  acquaintance  of 
many  men  since  eminent  in  one  little  world  or 


MR.  F.  S.  OLIVER  125 

another,  and  he  counts  certain  staid  but  influential 
politicians  among  his  friends.  A  few  youngsters 
of  talent  have  sat  at  his  feet ;  he  is  often  consulted 
by  serious  men  on  serious  questions;  and  hun- 
dreds of  speakers  talk  him  without  having  heard 
his  name. 

Much  of  the  fashionable  contempt  for  the  House 
of  Commons,  much  of  the  vague  yearning  for 
some  political  rearrangement  which  will  lessen  the 
influence  of  the  people  of  England  in  the  man- 
agement of  their  own  affairs  and  those  of  the 
Empire,  is  traceable  to  Mr.  Oliver.  ^^One  vote, 
one  value,"  was  the  old-fashioned  Unionist  re- 
joinder to  the  Radical  **One  man,  one  vote.*' 
One  cannot  appropriately  call  any  utterance  of 
Mr.  Oliver  a  **cry."  He  is  far  too  well-bred  for 
over-emphasis.  But  his  equivalent  to  a  cry  is 
**A11  votes  no  particular  value."  He  has  little 
belief  in  the  sovereign  people.  He  turns  his  back 
decisively  on  the  Victorian  Radical  belief  in  the 
ballot-box  and  progressive  enfranchisement.  He 
deplores  the  professional  politician.  He  is  espe- 
cially suspicious  of  the  eminent  K.C.  whose  stock- 
in-trade  as  a  legislator  is  only  *'an  experience  of 
human  affairs  made  up  of  an  infinite  number  of 
scraps  cut  out  of  other  people's  lives."  Turning 
to  the  future,  he  sees  as  little  hope  as  Carlyle  did 
in  the  leadership  by  men  who  are  mostly  wind- 


126  ALL  AND  SUNDRY 

bags,  of  men  who  are  mostly  fools.  He  believes 
in  the  strong  silent  man  who  does  things,  generally 
things  of  which  the  majority  disapproves.  When 
Mr.  Lloyd  George  talks  of  government  by  experts, 
he  is  only  saying  briefly  what  Mr.  Oliver  spreads 
over  hundreds  of  pages  of  close  argument  and  apt 
illustration. 

Quite  apart  from  any  moral  considerations,  Mr. 
Oliver  is  far  too  intelligent  to  pay  unreasoning 
tribute  to  the  system  of  the  late  German  Empire. 
It  too  obviously  depended  on  the  littleness  of  its 
citizens  for  the  greatness  of  the  State.    The  general 
docility  that  made  the  German  people  so  terrible 
an  instrument  of  crime  is  paralleled  in  no  other 
white  race;   a  mould  so  constrictive  would  have 
split  if  applied  to  a  more  obdurate  material.    But 
it  would  probably  be  fair  to  say  that  Mr.  Oliver 
is  friendly  to  the  Prussian  ideal  as  adapted  to 
British  peculiarities.     At  any  rate,  he  is  a  great 
admirer  of  Japan,  the  Asiatic  equivalent  of  Prus- 
sia— Japan,  where  '*a  mass  of  intelligent  humanity, 
reckless  of  their  lives,  yet  filled  with  the  joy  of 
life,''  is  ''  eager  for  distinction,  hungry  for  suc- 
cess, alert,  practical,  and  merry;  but  at  the  same 
time    subordinate,    humbly    and    piously    subordi- 
nate, to  a  pure  abstraction."    Mr.  Oliver  is  here 
obviously  judging  the  great  Japanese  experiment 
largely  on  hearsay  evidence.     Otherwise  he  would 


MR.  F.  S.  OLIVER  127 

not  lay  so  much  stress  on  one  aspect  of  it.  Those 
who  have  watched  on  the  spot  the  wonderful  drama 
of  Japanese  imperial  and  industrial  expansion  are 
less  impressed  with  the  gaiety  of  the  process. 
The  joy  of  life  is  not  the  most  outstanding  char- 
acteristic of  factory  life  of  Osaka  or  Nagoya. 
These  people  sing  at  their  work,  but  not  from 
merriment;  it  is  simply  that  they  cannot  work 
without  singing.  No  man  who  has  seen  a  ship 
coaled  by  thousands  of  unsexed  girls,  or  who  has 
watched  a  great  Japanese  cotton-mill  discharging 
its  operatives  after  their  day^s  work,  will  share 
Mr.  Oliver's  impression  of  a  buoyant  people.  He 
will  rather  feel  how  ** Western  methods''  have 
added  a  deeper  tinge  of  gloom  to  the  habitual 
sadness  of  the  Oriental. 

But  this  has  little  relevance  to  the  main  matter. 
The  happiness  of  the  individual  has  no  place  in 
Mr.  Oliver's  philosophy.  To  use  one  of  his  own 
figures,  his  ideal  is  not  the  bee,  but  the  hive. 
The  individual  citizen  is  of  small  consequence; 
the  Leviathan  of  the  State  is  all.  To  him  the 
one  vice  of  the  British  world  is  that  which  is  often 
acclaimed,  noisily  enough,  as  its  chief  virtue. 
There  is  no  **  sovereignty. "  Mr.  Oliver  could 
thrill  like  another  at  the  sight  of  hundreds  of 
thousands  of  young  men  scrambling  to  the  colours 
in  1914  and  1915;  but  though  it  might  be  magnifi- 


128  ALL  AND  SUNDRY 

cent,  it  was  not  Government;  they  should  all  have 
been  in  their  places,  duly  drilled  and  subordinated, 
long  before  the  war  came.  **  Advertising  for  an 
Army''  fills  him  with  contempt,  not  for  the  Army 
which  replied  to  the  advertisement,  but  for  the 
craven  mock-rulers  who  besought  when  it  was  their 
business  to  command. 

In  the  same  way  he  scoffs  at  the  **  silken  chain" 
view  of  Imperial  relations.  The  silken  chain  is 
a  mere  cobweb,  which  will  be  blown  away  at  the 
first  gust  of  real  disagreement.  **  Imperial  senti- 
ment" can  never  supply  the  place  of  *^  organic 
union."  The  whole  thing  is  a  pretence.  If  the 
authority  of  the  so-called  Imperial  Parliament — 
that  is,  the  Parliament  of  Great  Britain  and 
Ireland — ^were  a  reality,  it  would  be  the  most 
intolerable  tyranny;  since  it  is  unreal,  it  is  a 
phantom.  There  was  logic  in  the  attitude  of 
Bright  and  other  Kadicals  who  anticipated  com- 
plete independence  as  soon  as  the  Dominions 
attained  maturity.  There  is  no  logic  in  any  policy 
between  that  and  a  system  in  which  true  sov- 
ereignty exerted  by  a  Central  Government  is  felt 
in  the  most  remote  corner  of  the  Empire. 

And  this  sovereignty  must  not  concern  itself 
merely  with  affairs  of  defence  and  police.  It  must 
manage  the  Empire  as  the  gardener  does  his 
garden;  it  must  ** trench  and  drain  and  plant,  and 


MR.  F.  S.  OLIVER  129 

provide  artful  shelter,  and  clear  the  choking  un- 
dergrowth. *  *  It  is  a  pessimist  creed  to  leave  things 
alone,  and  let  effort  lose  itself  in  waste.  **The 
effort,  it  is  true,  can  only  come  from  the  individual, 
as  the  sap  can  only  come  from  the  soil;  but 
the  direction  of  effort  must  come  from  elsewhere.'* 
Given  this  wise  direction,  Mr.  Oliver's  proposi- 
tion is  indisputable.  The  whole  point  resides,  of 
course,  in  the  **  elsewhere. "  Whence  is  the  direc- 
tion to  come?  The  manager  of  a  stud-farm  knows 
exactly  what  he  wants — speed,  strength,  or  general 
utility — and  is  undeniably  superior,  in  brain  power, 
if  in  nothing  else,  to  the  animals  he  breeds.  The 
gardener  knows  whether  he  wants  cooking  apples 
or  strawberries,  cauliflowers  or  green  peas,  in 
what  proportions  and  of  what  flavours.  But  the 
eugenist  is  not  clear  whether  he  wants  a  poet  or 
a  hammer-thrower,  and  may  be  more  stupid,  more 
vicious,  more  generally  undesirable,  than  the  peo- 
ple he  would  eugenise.  The  State-builder,  too,  is 
only  human,  sometimes,  indeed,  falls  short  of  the 
ordinary  standard  for  men  of  good  education:  he 
may  have  as  distorted  an  idea  of  a  State  as  the 
makers  of  Sicilian  Avenue — '^experts,''  no  doubt 
— ^had  of  a  street.  Mr.  Oliver  is  never  tired  of 
pointing  out  with  how  little  wisdom  this  country 
is  governed.  He  has  himself  explored  the  Irish 
question,  and,  for  all  practical  purposes,  given  it 


130  ALL  AND  SUNDEY 

up.  In  one  mood  no  man  could  be  less  illusioned. 
Yet  in  another  he  seems  to  believe  that  only  slug- 
gishness and  want  of  imagination  stand  in  the  way 
of  devising  a  constitution  which  would  make  the 
British  Empire  one  organic  whole.  Like  Mrs. 
Chick,  he  believes  in  the  virtue  of  ** making  an 
effort." 

The  consolidating  force  he  relies  on,  a  little 
faintly  perhaps,  is  aristocracy.  He  himself  grants 
that  caste  is  the  inevitable  corollary  of  a  State 
ruled  on  the  principle  he  advocates.  Caste  is, 
indeed,  his  remedy  for  anarchy.  He  insists  on 
the  loss  the  United  States  has  suffered  from  the 
unconcern  of  its  great  families  in  government. 
He  calmly  assumes  that  all  the  virtues  of  the 
British  Constitution  are  due  to  the  ** aristocratic" 
elements  it  has  retained,  and  all  the  imperfections 
to  the  *^ democratic"  flavouring  it  has  grudgingly 
admitted.  Now  it  is  no  doubt  arguable  that 
aristocracy  has  been  in  many  respects  highly 
useful,  just  as  it  is  certain  that  its  influence  has 
been  in  some  ways  extremely  pernicious.  But 
when  Mr.  Oliver  speaks  of  Aristocracy  as  if  it 
were  more  or  less  synonymous  with  the  modern 
House  of  Lords,  he  is  surely  lacking  in  that 
"objectivity"  on  which  he  prides  himself,  and 
is  a  victim  of  the  "bondage  of  phrase"  which  he 
denounces  with  such  sure  rhetoric.     There  was  a 


MR.  F.  S.  OLIVER  131 

case  for  an  aristocracy  which,  apart  from  a  quite 
visible  and  limited  self-interest,  had  no  axe  to 
grind.  It  might  pursue  in  certain  directions  a 
very  selfish  and  unjust  course;  but  it  could  be 
trusted,  according  to  its  lights,  to  seek  the  good 
of  the  whole  nation.  It  did  not  sell,  and  it  could 
not  be  bought.  Can  the  same  be  said  of  the 
new  plutocracy,  whose  interests,  while  as  wide  as 
the  world,  are  by  no  means  obvious  to  the  ordinary 
man?  Aristocracy  was  above  all  things  national: 
plutocracy  everywhere  tends  to  be  international. 
Mr.  Oliver  has  much  that  is  true,  and  occasionally 
something  that  is  quite  impressively  sagacious, 
to  say  concerning  the  dangers  of  our  present 
loose  system  of  mere  makeshift  or  drift.  But  for 
the  remedy  he  tries  to  look  around  him  for  some- 
thing that  is  perhaps  not  there,  while  neglecting 
the  boundless  potentialities  that  really  exist.  For 
example,  he  often  speaks  of  ** tradition,"  *^ sense 
of  public  duty,*'  and  so  forth,  as  if  they  were 
confined  to  a  quite  narrow  class.  Yet  it  would 
seem,  from  the  records  of  the  Law  Courts  and 
the  gossip  of  the  society  columns,  that  nohlesse 
oblige  is  less  true  than  it  was  of  a  particular 
section  of  society,  while  most  educated  but  quite 
undistinguished  men,  have  the  happiness  of  a 
large  circle  of  acquaintance  in  which  the  standard 
of  integrity  is  of  the  highest. 


132  ALL  AND  SUNDEY 

Mr.  Oliver's  surname  at  once  suggests  Bath, 
and  one  cannot  mention  Bath  without  thinking 
of  Cheltenham.  The  rills  of  wisdom  that  flow 
through  ** Alexander  Hamilton''  and  *' Ordeal  by- 
Battle"  are,  surely,  Cheltenham  waters.  His 
writings  suggest,  despite  their  sturdy  disdain  for 
the  mere  sentimentalist,  the  superstitions  so  com- 
mon in  the  pleasant  Cotswold  town,  where  retired 
conquerors  on  the  minor  scale  exchange  theories 
with  statesmen  who  have  only  swayed  imaginary 
Senates.  Very  ordinary  people  can  curse  a  lord 
or  a  walking  delegate.  But  it  is  only  a  very 
superior  and  cultured  upper  middle-class  critic 
who  can  combine  a  distrust  for  the  ^^ democracy" 
which  has  never  existed  in  England  with  the  old- 
fashioned  reverence  for  the  **  traditions "  of  the 
*^ great  English  families"  who  have  mostly  ceased 
to  be  great. 


MR.  T.  P.  O'CONNOR 

When  Mr.  Thomas  Power  O'Connor,  Member  of 
Parliament  of  the  Scotland  Division  of  Liverpool, 
attained  his  seventieth  birthday  a  courtly  surprise 
was  expressed  in  some  quarters.  It  seemed  to 
many  people  astonishing  that  so  juvenile  a  man 
should  have  passed  the  allotted  span.  And  indeed 
there  are  affinities  between  Mr.  O'Connor  and  the 
boy  who  refused  to  grow  up.  But,  foolishly 
enough,  the  present  writer  experienced  a  shock 
precisely  opposite  in  kind.  For  it  has  always 
been  a  pet  notion  of  his,  tenaciously  held  despite 
all  documentary  evidence  to  the  contrary,  that 
*^T.  P."  goes  back  to  the  time  of  Thackeray's 
Fleet  Street,  that  his  original  name  was  Jack 
Finucane,  and  that  he  once  acted  as  sub-editor 
on  the  paper  for  which  Mr.  Arthur  Pendennis  did 
the  reviewing. 

Let  it  be  at  once  ** conceded,"  as  they  say  in 
the  great  Republic,  that  the  ordinary  authorities 
in  no  way  support  this  view.  They  tell  us,  quite 
confidently,  that  Mr.  O'Connor's  father  was  Thomas 
O'Connor,  and  his  mother  Theresa  Power — hence 
the  ^*T.  P."  which  many  may  have  thought  stood 
for  Thomas  Patrick  or  Timothy  Paul.    They  tell 

133 


134  ALL  AND  SUNDRY 

us  further  that  he  was  bom  at  Athlone  in  1848, 
that  he  was  educated  at  the  College  of  the  Im- 
maculate Conception  in  that  famous  city  and  at 
Queen  ^s  College,  Galway,  and  that  he  entered  in 
1867  what  Carlyle  calls  **the  extremely  miscel- 
laneous regiment"  of  journalism.  He  became 
junior  reporter  on  a  Conservative  Dublin  paper 
called  Saunders'  Newsletter,  The  nature  of  Mr. 
0  ^Connor  ^s  views  at  this  time  cannot  be  ascer- 
tained; but  it  may  be  assumed  without  offence, 
that  the  politics  of  the  paper  were  less  im- 
portant than  the  meagre  pay  it  offered.  Journal- 
ism in  Ireland  is  a  more  than  usually  hungry 
business;  and  after  three  years,  young  **T.  P.'' 
found  intolerable  the  discrepancy  between  Eis  sal- 
ary and  his  manly  appetite.  He  went  to  London 
in  search  of  larger  things  just  about  the  time 
Napoleon  III.  was  coming  to  England  to  accom- 
modate his  diminished  state.  An  Irish  recruit 
is  always  sure  of  finding  plenty  of  friends  on 
the  London  Press.  '^Why  Pall  Mall  Gazette?'' 
asked  Wagg.  ** Because,"  answered  Captain  Shan- 
don,  ^*the  editor  was  born  at  Dublin,  the  sub- 
editor at  Cork,  because  the  proprietor  lives  in 
Paternoster  Row,  and  the  paper  is  published  in 
Catherine  Street,  Strand."  Young  O'Connor  was 
not  long  in  finding  on  the  Daily  Telegraph  a  more 


ME.  T.  P.  O'CONNOR  135 

substantial  guarantee  against  famine  than  Dublin 
could  give  him. 

The  quick-witted  young  aspirant  rapidly  **made 
good*'  as  a  newspaper  man,  and  was  not  long  in 
getting  hold  also  of  certain  political  ropes  by  the 
aid  of  which  he  lowered  himself  deftly  from  the 
Press  gallery  to  the  floor  of  the  House  of  Commons. 
Nobody  not  Irish,  I  take  it,  really  understands 
the  mysteries  which  go  to  the  making  of  a  Nation- 
alist M.P.,  and  it  is  not  for  me  to  attempt  to 
pierce  the  veil.  Suffice  it  to  say  that,  long  before 
he  had  acquired  any  great  reputation  in  the 
Republic  of  Letters,  **T.  P.*'  got  himself  elected 
for  Galway.  Once  in  the  House,  he  stayed  there, 
though  in  1885  he  transferred  his  affections  from 
the  Irish  city  to  the  Liverpool  Division  which  has 
since  remained  faithful  to  him  through  all  kinds 
of  political  weather.  His  great  journalistic  chance 
came  in  the  late  eighties.  The  London  democracy 
wanted  an  ** organ'';  the  Star  was  designed  to 
fill  the  want,  and  who  so  fitted  to  express  the 
yearnings  of  the  dumb  millions  by  the  Thames 
as  the  ex-junior  reporter  who  had  pondered  the 
great  problems  of  humanity  on  the  banks  of  the 
Liffey?  In  many  ways  the  Star  under  Mr.  O'Con- 
nor was  a  remarkable  production.  He  gathered 
round  him — or  somebody  did  it  for  him — a  knot  of 
extremely  brilliant  men.    There  is  scarcely  a  vital 


136  ALL  AND  SUNDEY 

London  newspaper  to-day  that  does  not  owe  the 
greater  part  of  its  success  to  the  talents  of  Star 
men  of  those  early  days.  The  extraordinary  vul- 
garity of  one  side  of  the  paper — as  a  matter  of 
mere  fact  it  never  actually  referred  to  Tennyson 
as  **Alf'' — ^was  redeemed  by  the  equally  notable 
ability  of  its  political,  literary,  dramatic,  and 
musical  criticism.  Yet  for  all  this  it  may  be 
questioned  whether  Mr.  O'Connor  ever  possessed 
the  qualities  of  a  great  editor.  Certainly  the 
history  of  the  Sun,  which  he  founded  after  leaving 
the  Star,  suggests  that  the  unquestioned  brilliance 
of  his  first  editorial  experiment  may  have  been 
the  result  rather  of  a  happy  series  of  accidents 
than  of  his  controlling  capacity. 

But  there  was  one  Teature  that  he  stamped 
permanently  not  only  on  this  particular  newspaper, 
but  on  popular  journalism  in  general.  That  was 
*^ Mainly  About  People.''  The  same  quality  which 
probably  forbade  the  career  of  a  great  editor  has 
made  *^T.  P."  the  most  famous  gossip  of  his 
time,  and  the  forerunner  of  all  who  find  fame 
and  fortune  in  telling  stories  to  the  people  in  the 
pit  about  the  celebrities  in  the  boxes  and  the 
stalls.  **T.  P."  is  too  much  interested  in  people 
to  have  much  thought  to  spare  for  questions.  He 
is  of  the  school  of  Horace  Walpole;  **  Serious 
business  is   a  trifle  to  him,   and   trifles   are  his 


MR.  T.  P.  O'CONNOR  137 

serious  business.*'  Not  that  **T.  P.'*  is  without 
convictions.  But  from  the  bread-and-butter  point 
of  view  he  cares  little  **what  Mr.  Gladstone  said 
in  1872";  he  is  more  interested  in  how  Mr.  Glad- 
stone looked,  smiled,  coughed,  or  hiccupped — for 
this  is  ^*copy."  Irish  people,  in  fits  of  temper, 
have  sometimes  called  him,  very  absurdly,  **an 
Englishman,  born  at  Athlone.'*  There  would  be 
more  point  in  describing  him  as  a  Cockney  so 
completely  Londonised  as  to  be  now  chiefly  a 
stage  Irishman.  And  one  important  side  of  the 
Cockney  character  is  an  almost  personal  pride  in 
the  West  End.  Brown  and  Jones  may  declaim 
in  their  political  capacity  against  the  rich  and 
great,  but  they  love  to  know  that  Mr.  Solly  Joel 
has  had  his  shutters  painted  green,  and  that  the 
Duchess  of  Upminster  has  had  her  famous  rope 
of  pearls  restrung.  It  is  concentration  on  that 
fascinating  department  of  things  which  has  gradu- 
ally made  the  grosser  realities  of  life  a  little  dim 
for  Mr.  O'Connor,  and  converted  the  once  fiery 
democrat  of  the  Star  into  the  sleek  flaneur  of 
**M.  A.  P." 

And  here  we  come  back  to  the  Jack  Finucane 
theory.  **It  was,"  writes  Thackeray,  **a  grand, 
nay,  a  touching  sight  for  a  philosopher,  to  see 
Jack  Finucane,  Esquire,  with  a  plate  of  meat 
from  the  cookshop,  and  a  glass  of  porter  from 


138  ALL  AND  SUNDEY 

the  public-liouse,  for  his  meal,  recounting  the 
feasts  of  the  great,  as  if  he  had  been  present  at 
them;  and  in  tattered  trousers  and  dingy  shirt- 
sleeves, cheerfully  describing  and  arranging  the 
most  brilliant  fetes  of  the  world  of  fashion.  Since 
he  left  his  own  native  village  Jack  had  seldom 
seen  any  society  but  such  as  used  the  parlour  of 
the  taverns  which  he  frequented,  whereas  from 
his  writing  you  would  have  supposed  that  he 
dined  with  ambassadors,  and  that  his  common 
lounge  was  the  bow- window  of  White's.'' 

It  is  precisely  this  talent  of  suggesting  slap-on- 
the-back  familiarity  with  the  great  that  is  Mr. 
O'Connor's  strong  point.  **  We  are  most  inti- 
mate; je  le  tutoye/'  is  his  incessant  note.  But 
clearly  Jack  Finucane  knew  all  the  tricks  to  be 
learned  in  that  respect.  He  only  suffered  the  fate 
of  men  in  advance  of  their  time.  Are  we,  then, 
justified  in  assuming  that,  the  ordinary  books  of 
reference  notwithstanding.  Jack  Finucane  really 
was  **T.  P."?  There  is  at  least  material  for  a 
new  Baconian  controversy  a  century  hence.  The 
present  writer  does  not  wish  to  be  as  dogmatic 
as  the  late  Sir  Edwin  Durning-Lawrence.  He 
does  not  suggest  imbecility  in  those  who  may 
deny  that  Jack  and  **T.  P."  were  one  and  the 
same  person,  and  point  to  mere  discrepancies  of 
age  and  so  forth;  he  is  content  to  point  out  that 


MR.  T.  P.  O'CONNOR  139 

**T.  P.'*  is  merely  Finucane  well-dressed,  pros- 
perous, and  experienced  in  cookery,  with  the  run 
of  the  House  of  Commons  smoke-room  and  the 
Hotel  Metropole  at  Brighton. 

**T.  P.''  is,  with  the  possible  exception  of  Mr. 
Harold  Begbie,  the  most  prolific  of  newspaper 
writers;  which  is  saying  something.  *^The  most 
unaccountable  of  all  ready  writers, '*  says  Carlyle, 
**is  the  common  editor  of  a  daily  newspaper. 
Consider  his  leading  articles;  what  they  treat  of, 
how  passably  they  are  done.  Straw  that  has  been 
thrashed  a  hundred  times  without  wheat;  .  .  . 
how  a  man,  with  merely  human  faculty,  buckles 
himself  nightly  with  new  vigour  and  interest  to 
this  thrashed  straw,  nightly  thrashes  it  anew, 
nightly  gets  up  new  thunder  about  it;  and  so 
goes  on  thrashing  and  thundering  for  a  consider- 
able series  of  years;  this  is  a  fact  remaining  still 
to  be  accounted  for  in  human  physiology.  The 
vitality  of  man  is  great.''  That  is  just  the  miracle 
of  **T.  P." — how  much  he  has  done  that  is 
scarcely  worth  doing,  and  how  passably  he  has 
done  it.  He  is  not,  and  probably  never  could 
have  been,  a  good  writer.  He  is  too  glib,  too 
uncertain  of  what  he  wants  to  say,  too  easily 
satisfied  as  to  how  he  says  it.  But  he  is,  within 
limits,  a  capital  talker  in  print,  and  only  tedious 
when  he  makes  one  of  his  rather  rare  excursions 


140  ALL  AND  SUNDRY 

into  the  serious.  He  possesses  in  a  quite  rare 
degree  the  journalistic  instinct  for  things  momen- 
tarily interesting,  and  equally  the  journalistic 
knack  of  assuming  familiarity  with  things  of  which 
he  is  abysmally  ignorant.  So  long  as  the  Em- 
peror Diocletian  remains  imbedded  in  Gibbon 
he  is  nothing  to  '*T.  P.''  But  should  Mr.  Asquith 
disinter  him  in  a  speech,  or  Lord  Rosebery  treat 
him  to  a  **Last  Phase,"  *^T.  P.''  is  ready  with  a 
chatty  two  columns  on  the  futility  of  human 
ambition  and  the  exquisite  satisfaction  of  growing 
cabbages,  with  perhaps  a  glance  at  the  ineptitude 
of  a  former  Irish  Secretary  who  disregarded 
**T.  P.'s"  advice  concerning  the  cabbage  poten- 
tialities of  County  Clare.  He  will  tell  an  aristo- 
cratic ghost  story  with  great  gusto  if  there  was 
a  marriage  yesterday  in  the  family  of  the  haunted ; 
otherwise  the  ghost  clanks  its  chains  unheeded. 
He  revels  in  a  book  by  a  nobody  about  some- 
bodies, or  by  a  somebody  about  anything;  the 
one  book  that  has  no  interest  for  him  is  the  book 
that  depends  on  nothing  but  its  merits.  As  with 
the  jester  in  **As  You  Like  It,''  the  strange 
places  of  his  mind  are  crammed  with  observation, 
'*the  which  he  vents  in  mangled  forms."  But 
the  main  miracle  in  the  whole  business  is  not  the 
colossal  memory  for  things  unmemorable,  nor  the 
amazing  facility  of  the  writer,  but  the  robustness 


MR.  T.  P.  O'CONNOR  141 

of  a  digestion  which  can,  year  after  year,  absorb 
mere  husk  and  turn  it  into  tissue  which,  however 
molluscoid,  has  some  shape  and  life.  Mr.  O'Con- 
nor keeps  at  seventy  much  of  the  chubbiness  of 
healthy  youth;  and  indeed  only  a  very  healthy 
and  a  rather  humourless  man  could  have  got 
through  all  his  work. 

Such  is  Mr.  O'Connor  regarded  as  a  literary 
curiosity.  As  a  politician,  except  perhaps  as  a 
go-between,  he  has  long  ceased  to  have  any  par- 
ticular significance.  Possibly  he  may  be,  in  a 
roundabout  way,  rather  a  liability  than  otherwise 
to  the  Nationalist  party.  For,  though  no  doubt 
a  sincere  Irish  patriot,  he  gives  the  English  a  false 
and  rather  dangerous  impression.  He  is  so  very 
much  the  stage  Irishman  that  we  are  apt  to  think 
him  the  only  reality,  and  to  doubt,  in  regarding 
him,  the  reality  of  very  different  Irishmen  we 
never  see — such  as  those  mistaken  but  brave  and 
cultured  men  who  were  court-martialled  and  shot 
in  1916.  We  might  still  have  had  to  shoot  them, 
but  we  might  have  shot  them  understandingly, 
and  taken  better  measures  to  avoid  future  shoot- 
ings, but  for  the  comical  contrast  between  Mr. 
O'Connor  as  Irish  stalwart  and  ^*Tay  Pay"  as 
universal  provider  to  the  Cockney  passion  for 
trifles. 


SIR  HENRY  DALZIEL 

In  those  days,  now  so  dim  and  distant,  when  the 
Daily  News  used  to  talk  about  the  flowing  tide, 
the  great  heart  of  British  Liberalism  was  rejoiced 
by  the  election  for  Kirkcaldy  Burghs  of  a  young 
journalist,  the  chief  fact  concerning  whom  ap- 
peared to  be,  judging  from  the  **  Mainly  About 
People"  Columns,  that  he  spelt  his  name  Dalziel 
and  pronounced  it  like  D.  L. 

The  leading  articles  notwithstanding,  the  world 
went  on  much  the  same  after  this  **  brilliant  and 
significant  victory''  as  before.  The  cause  of  the 
people  for  which  Mr.  Dalziel  was  understood  to 
be  enthusiastic  was  not  materially  advanced  by 
his  attainment  of  what  proved  to  be  a  freehold 
of  the  Scottish  burgh.  Nor  is  it  clear  that 
Kirkcaldy  itself  gained  much  by  its  fidelity  to 
Mr.  Dalziel.  He  conferred  on  it  no  great  intel- 
lectual distinction.  He  was  not  a  rich  man,  who 
could  manure  this  light  soil  with  gold.  He  had 
no  influence  of  the  kind  which  Scottish  Whips 
have  sometimes  rather  impudently  brought  to  bear 
on  the  politics  of  small  places  in  Northern  Britain. 
He  could  hold  out  no  hints  of  Government  con- 
tracts if  things  went  well;  in  fact  for  years  there 

142 


SIR  HENRY  DALZIEL  143 

was  no  Liberal  Government  on  which  pressure 
could  be  exercised.  But,  however  obscure  the 
reason,  Kirkcaldy  was  faithful  to  Mr.  Dalziel. 
That  Mr.  Dalziel  was  faithful  to  Kirkcaldy  is 
more  easily  explicable.  The  letters  **M.P."  were 
of  great  value  to  him,  vastly  more  than  the  title 
since  bestowed  on  him  by  a  grateful  monarch. 
It  is  often  debated  whether  the  literary  man 
does  well  or  ill  to  enter  Parliament.  Everything 
depends  on  the  man.  If  his  object  is  to  say  great 
things,  he  can  generally  say  them  much  better 
outside.  If  he  wishes  to  do  great  things,  it  is 
quite  unlikely  that  he  will  succeed;  the  common 
fate  of  most  literary  recruits  is  to  diminish  one 
kind  of  reputation  without  making  another.  But 
it  is  a  different  matter  with  the  journalist  who 
cares  nothing  about  living  in  the  future  and  much 
about  living  in  the  present.  A  seat  is  to  him 
a  great  asset.  Editors  of  all  kinds  look  kindly  on 
the  writing  M.  P.,  and  cashiers  relax  their  parsi- 
mony. He  is  ipso  facto  an  ** expert''  on  anything 
from  the  style  of  a  morning  coat  to  the  latest 
mood  of  the  Amir.  If  personal  journalism  is  his 
line,  the  fact  that  he  sits  behind  the  Prime  Minister 
is  held  to  qualify  him  to  treat  the  British  public 
to  ** Private  Peeps  in  Downing  Street.''  If  he 
deals  ponderously  with  public  questions,  the  pages 
of  the  heavy  reviews   are   open  to  him.     If  he 


144  ALL  AND  SUNDRY 

supplies  the  daily  press  with  Lobby  tittle-tattle, 
he  can  use  more  or  less  confidential  information 
to  advantage.  And  if  his  ambitions  are  altogether 
wider,  and  he  aspires  to  buy  and  sell  newspapers 
instead  of  news,  he  is  in  a  position  to  get  in 
touch  with  very  rich  men.  People  who  sneer  at 
the  House  of  Commons  as  a  mere  talking  shop 
ignore  the  fact  that  it  is  a  shop  for  all  sorts 
of  commodities,  a  great  shop,  doing  a  surprising 
amount  of  business. 

Sir  Henry  Dalziel  does  not  belong  to  the  old 
thriftless  order  of  journalism.  There  is  nothing 
of  the  Bohemian  about  him.  His  pale  and  rather 
full  face,  with  the  big  black  moustache  and  the 
bagged  eyelids,  suggests  rather  the  professional 
director,  and  the  staid  style  of  his  dress — he  is 
addicted  to  the  tall  hat  and  the  now  infrequent 
frock-coat — ^belongs  to  that  character.  He  does 
not  speak  a  great  deal,  but  seldom  rises  with- 
out attracting  attention.  Not  that  he  ever  says 
anything  of  startling  originality.  Even  among 
politicians  he  is  rather  remarkable  for  the  poverty 
of  his  thought  and  the  shabbiness  of  his  phrase- 
ology. It  may  almost  be  suspected  that  he  de- 
liberately adopts  this  penurious  style,  just  as 
Mr.  Eockefeller  is  said  to  wear  a  secondhand  wig 
and  patched  trousers — it  emphasises  his  signifi- 
cance.     For    the    whole    interest    of    Sir    Henry 


SIR  HENRY  DALZIEL  145 

DalziePs  speeches,  like  that  of  the  barometer,  is 
really  outside  them;  he  has  come  to  be,  in  a  quite 
special  degree,  the  storm  indicator  of  the  House 
of  Commons.  What  would  be  coughed  down 
from  a  less  subtle  personage  is  from  him  carefully 
heard  and  weighed.  During  the  period  when  Mr. 
Asquith's  fate  was  in  the  balance,  a  stranger  to 
the  House  of  Commons  might  well  have  been 
astonished  by  the  strained  interest  in  a  question 
or  speech  of  Sir  Henry  Dalziel;  meaningless  to 
him,  it  was  full  of  import  to  those  behind  the 
scenes. 

Behind  the  scenes  is  the  region  natural  to  this 
Londonised  Scotsman.  Himself  a  man  of  no  great 
force,  he  is  skilled  in  setting  greater  forces  in 
operation.  It  has  been  noted  that  the  only  power 
really  possessed  by  man  is  that  of  lifting  things 
into  their  right  place.  Yet  that  power  suffices 
for  the  most  tremendous  results.  Our  part  in  the 
firing  of  a  fourteen-inch  gun  or  the  flight  of  an 
aeroplane  is  only  that  of  cunning  juxtaposition; 
the  forces  of  nature  do  the  rest.  In  the  political 
world  equally  surprising  things  come  about  through 
the  manipulation  of  relatively  puny  agents.  Sir 
Henry  Dalziel  is  what  men  of  science  call  a 
catalyser — itself  insignificant,  but  the  cause  of 
much.  How  far  he  represents  any  principle  in 
politics  is  uncertain;  though  he  is  understood  to 


146  ALL  AND  SUNDRY 

have  a  preference  for  *' advanced''  things:  they 
are  certainly  easier  to  talk  about  and  make  better 
headlines.  His  attachment  to  Mr.  Lloyd  George 
is  very  genuine;  so  also  was  his  attachment  to 
Mr.  Asquith;  all  Sir  Henry's  loyalties  have  the 
surest  foundation.  He  is  above  all  the  **  practical 
politician":  as  free  as  most  men  of  idealistic 
impedimenta.  Such  men  often  achieve  a  very 
considerable  success,  but  it  is  seldom,  even  in  the 
worldliest  sense,  the  highest  kind.  Some  degree 
of  enthusiasm  for  the  imponderables  seems  to  be 
necessary  for  anything  approaching  greatness  even 
in  material  things.  The  very  American  sausage- 
maker  who  thinks  only  of  dividends  will  never 
quite  lead  the  sausage  industry;  he,  too,  must  be 
something  of  the  poet,  seeking  to  express  himself 
in  festoons  of  sausages  linking  all  the  continents 
together.  It  is,  perhaps,  the  lack  of  all  mysticism 
in  Sir  Henry  Dalziel  which  imposes  a  certain  limit 
to  his  success  as  a  newspaper  organiser  on  modem 
lines.  Though,  through  the  Daily  Chronicle  deal, 
Sir  Henry  Dalziel  has  stepped  into  the  first  rank 
in  Fleet  Street,  he  is  no  second  Northcliffe.  His 
work  is  what  the  Italian  connoisseurs  of  painting 
call  pasticcio;  every  collector  is  familiar  with  the 
picture  in  which  some  rather  second-rate  artist 
has  caught  an  expression  from  Michael  Angelo, 
an  effect  of  light  from  Caravaggio,  a  bit  of  colour- 
\ 


SIR  HENRY  DALZIEL  147 

ing  from  Bellini,  and  a  pose  from  Leonardo.  All 
is  there  except  the  one  vivifying  touch  of  genius. 
The  most  remarkable  thing  about  the  newspapers 
which  Sir  Henry  Dalziel  has  acquired  is  that  they 
at  once  ceased  to  be  remarkable  when  he  assumed 
control.  There  was  a  time  when  many  men  would 
have  disinherited  their  sons  for  reading  Reynolds's; 
it  now  rouses  angry  passions  no  more  than  the 
Bazaar  and  Mart  or  the  Poultry  Record,  Lord 
Northcliffe  is  an  example  of  a  real  but  limited 
genius  working  through  the  medium  of  printed 
matter.  Sir  Henry  Dalziel  mainly  illustrates  the 
weakness  of  the  modem  multiple  newspaper  con- 
trol— a  weakness  which  in  the  long  run  must 
produce  a  very  enfeebled  press  or  provoke  a  whole- 
sale revolution  in  journalistic  methods. 

When  Captain  Shandon  was  reading  the  pros- 
pectus of  the  Pall  Mall  Gazette,  Publisher  Bungay, 
the  proprietor,  went  off  to  sleep,  and  only  woke 
to  say  it  was  **all  right."  Thackeray  makes  a 
point  of  Mr.  Bungay's  dulness;  but  after  all  it 
was  perhaps  the  most  sensible  thing  Mr.  Bungay 
could  do.  He  knew  Captain  Shandon,  and  he  knew 
himself.  Captain  Shandon  could  always  be  trusted 
with  a  policy  and  never  with  a  five-pound  note. 
Mr.  Bungay  had  not  the  smallest  conception  of 
how  many  political  beans  went  to  the  making  of 
five;  but  he  knew  exactly  how  many  **ems*'  went 


148  ALL  AND  SUNDRY 

to  a  column  of  minion  type,  and  how  many  adver- 
tisements to  a  fine  middle-class  fortune.  Captain 
Shandon  heard  him  snore;  his  clerks  and  can- 
vassers never  did.  And  that  was  really  the  secret 
of  the  respect  in  which  Mr.  Bungay  was  held  by 
his  banker,  and  the  Pall  Mall  Gazette  by  its  readers. 
The  comparative  dignity  and  sanity  of  the 
Victorian  press  have  been  the  theme  of  much 
admiring  conunent;  but  it  is  less  generally  recog- 
nised that  these  qualities  rested  largely  on  the 
consciousness  the  old  kind  of  proprietor  had  of 
his  limitations.  He  took  no  stock  in  ideas.  Ideas 
were  the  editor's  business,  and  to  do  the  editor 
justice  he  was  generally  honest  and  able.  Adver- 
tisements and  circulation  were  the  proprietor's 
business,  but,  to  do  him  justice,  also,  he  had  the 
decent  pride  of  a  tradesman  that  still  compels  a 
West  End  butcher  to  limit  his  profit  rather  than 
lower  the  character  of  his  shop.  He  was  proud 
of  dealing  in  a  first-class  article,  proud  and  not 
the  least  jealous  of  his  editor's  reputation  as  a 
scholar,  wit,  or  man  of  the  world.  Of  the  typical 
newspaper  magnate  of  to-day  the  precise  opposite 
is  true.  He  makes  policy;  his  editors  express  it. 
There  are  no  ** great  editors"  to-day;  no  Delanes 
of  The  Times  or  Mudfords  of  the  Standard,  But 
there  are  also  no  Bungays,  merely  saying  **A1I 
right"   to  their  Captain   Shandons.     Instead   we 


SIR  HENRY  DALZIEL  149 

have  men  of  vast  wealth,  going  freely  into  the 
enlarged  ** society*'  of  the  time,  and  knowing  most 
people  who  *^ count.'*  The  editor  is  no  longer 
the  chief  of  a  band  of  Free  Companions,  hired 
to  fight  for  a  particular  cause,  but  allowed  a  large 
choice  in  the  manner  of  it;  he  is  rather  a  gen- 
erously paid  phonograph  for  the  conveyance  of 
instructions.  The  due  expression  of  views,  rather 
than  the  views  themselves,  is  his  department.  In 
some  ways  the  change  of  system  works  well.  There 
is  less  slavishness  to  party.  On  the  wider  aspects 
of  policy  there  is  often  a  quite  reasonably  fair 
and  independent  judgment.  The  modern  news- 
paper magnate  is  too  rich  to  be  bought,  and 
generally  too  shrewd  to  be  hoodwinked  on  matters 
of  which  he  is  in  a  position  to  judge.  He  may 
be  over-apprehensive  of  the  mythical  man  in  the 
street,  and  sometimes  degenerates  into  a  mere 
popularity-hunter;  but  it  would  be,  generally 
speaking,  a  mistake  to  think  of  him  as  wholly 
lacking  in  a  sense  of  responsibility  or  wholly  ab- 
sorbed in  pushing  his  circulation.  In  brief,  he 
means  well,  is  generally  a  patriot  so  far  as  he 
knows,  has  some  sense  of  public  duty,  likes  to 
be  fair  when  his  prejudices  are  not  violently 
aroused,  and  on  the  whole  fulfils  his  function 
as  well  as  can  reasonably  be  expected  of  a  very 
busy  man,  with  many  interests,  business  and  social. 


150  ALL  AND  SUNDRY 

But  it  is  obviously  impossible  for  any  one  person 
to  grasp  all  the  immensely  complex  problems  of 
these  times,  and  the  tendency  of  a  rich  and  much 
courted  man  is  to  collect  his  opinions  as  he  does 
his  old  masters,  on  the  advice  of  friends  and 
experts  who  are  often  interested  and  very  seldom 
dependable.  Moreover,  it  is  hardly  possible  for 
a  person  much  in  political  and  general  society 
to  preserve  the  impartiality  necessary  for  due 
performance  of  the  duty  of  a  public  critic.  It 
is,  of  course,  easy  enough  to  deal  the  kind  of 
blow  that  the  clown  gives  the  policeman  in  the 
harlequinade.  One  can  denounce  in  Fleet  Street 
the  profligate  finance  of  the  Chancellor  of  the 
Exchequer,  and  yet  exchange  pleasant  common- 
places with  him  the  same  evening  in  Grosvenor 
Square.  That  is  all  in  the  game,  and  nobody 
in  the  game  resents  it.  Much  social  discomfort, 
however,  must  be  the  lot  of  the  man  who  deals 
faithfully  with  public  men  whose  friends  he  is 
always  meeting.  The  incompatibility  between  so- 
cial ubiquity  and  full  independence  was  recognised 
by  many  old  editors,  who  lived  lives  of  seclusion, 
while  making  use  of  a  perfect  intelligence  depart- 
ment. It  is  true  that  in  some  marvellous  way 
more  than  one  modern  Colossus  of  the  newspaper 
world  does  continue  to  withstand  the  thousand 
and  one  influences  brought  to  bear,  from  the  smile 


SIR  HENRY  DALZIEL  151 

of  beauty  to  the  frown  of  power.  But  there  have 
been,  and  are,  others  less  stoical;  and  the  opinions 
expressed  by  some  newspapers  undoubtedly  de- 
pend not  at  all  on  what  any  one  person,  wise 
or  foolish,  thinks,  but  partly  on  whom  the  pro- 
prietor dines  with  and  partly  on  what  is  con- 
sidered good  business.  Naturally  in  due  course 
the  more  intelligent  public  assesses  pretty  accu- 
rately the  value  of  such  comment.  It  has  a  knack 
of  guessing  what  it  cannot  know,  and  soon  de- 
tects the  ** leader'*  that  does  not  lead.  In  turn 
the  newspaper  becomes  aware  that  its  opinions 
count  for  little;  but  it  still  aims  at  influence, 
and  there  arises  a  temptation  to  omit,  emphasise, 
or  colour  news  according  to  effect  aimed  at.  This 
manipulation  has  been  in  some  cases  carried  so 
far  that  the  reader  of  a  single  daily  newspaper 
would  have  a  most  fantastic  notion  of  what  was 
happening  at  home  or  abroad. 

But  the  main  danger  to  the  Press  traditions 
of  this  country  after  all  lies  not  so  much  in  the 
eccentricities  or  weaknesses  of  the  man  who  has 
built  up  a  great  property,  as  in  the  purchase 
and  sale  of  newspapers  as  if  they  were  strings 
of  butter-shops  or  eating-houses.  The  great  news- 
paper-owner who  is  also  a  master  of  his  craft 
must  have  a  personality;  people  get  to  know  his 
peculiarities  and  make   due   allowance  for  them. 


152  ALL  AND  SUNDEY 

It  is  otherwise  with  the  people  who  buy  rather 
than  breed.  The  honest  Chauvinist  print  of  to-day 
may  be  the  organ  of  cosmopolitan  finance  to-mor- 
row, or  get  into  the  hands  of  a  foreign  group 
next  week.  The  reader  never  knows  what  *  inter- 
est" is  behind  it.  There  is  a  danger,  undoubtedly, 
in  the  ease  with  which  speculators  can  buy  news- 
paper plants,  and  (with  occasional  exceptions) 
newspaper  staffs.  But  the  danger  may  be  easily 
exaggerated.  The  case  of  the  defunct  Standard 
shows  that  it  is  easier  to  acquire  a  great  news- 
paper than  to  maintain  it  as  an  effective  influence. 
The  public  is  quick  to  judge  for  itself  whether 
there  has  been  **no  change  of  policy,"  still  quicker 
to  detect  the  absence  of  personality.  There  is  no 
personality  in  a  Trust  unless  it  is,  in  essence, 
also  a  man.  And  in  journalism,  as  in  other  crafts, 
technical  skill  will  never  quite  compensate  for 
the  absence  of  conviction.  Influence,  in  the  long 
run,  depends  on  intellectual  honesty,  and  intel- 
lectual honesty  is  precisely  what  the  Trust-monger 
cannot  buy,  and,  generally  speaking,  does  not  think 
worth  buying. 


ME.  HILAIRE  BELLOC 

**Thb  little  more,  and  how  much  it  is!*'  Mr. 
Hilaire  Belloc  is  an  example  of  how  much  too 
much  the  little  more  may  sometimes  be.  Surely 
the  most  bountiful  star  of  the  firmament  must 
have  twinkled  over  his  nativity.  Part  French, 
part  English,  with  a  touch  also  of  Irish  blood,  he 
possesses  a  quite  unfair  proportion  of  the  gifts  and 
graces  of  all  three  nations.  His  French  clearness 
of  brain  is  modified  by  something  no  Frenchman 
ever  had  that  marks  him  as  authentically  of  the 
land  of  Shakespeare.  He  is  very  French  when  he 
writes  about  British  politics;  he  is  very  English 
when  he  writes  about  his  much-loved  Sussex.  He 
is  French  in  his  faculty  of  treating  intricate  things 
so  that  they  do  not  confuse,  and  dull  things  so 
that  they  do  not  bore.  Here  he  is  at  constant 
war  with  our  tradition  that  to  be  deep  one  must 
be  rather  illiterate  and  a  little  stupid.  Nobody 
would  ever  dream  of  calling  Mr.  Belloc  level- 
headed, and  he  would  want  to  call  out  anybody 
who  did.  In  his  abundant  wit,  his  savage  irony, 
his  tendency  to  argumentative  brutality,  his  black- 
and-white  logical  definiteness — in  all  that  polemical 
part   of  him  he   is  the   true   son  of  his  father, 

153 


154  ALL  AND  SUNDEY 

the  French  barrister.  But  no  Frenchman  could 
write,  few  Frenchmen  could  understand,  his  non- 
sense rhymes,  and  in  his  best  lyrics  there  is  the 
very  smell  of  England's  *^ foggy  south,  puffing 
with  wind  and  rain.'' 

Of  that  side  of  Mr.  Belloc,  too  little  seen  in  his 
middle  age,  it  is  not  my  business  to  speak.  His 
best  books  are,  indeed,  dainties  to  be  tasted  rather 
than  talked  about.  My  only  concern  here  is  with 
Mr.  Belloc  the  political  critic  and  the  founder 
of  a  school  of  thought  for  which  it  is  hard  to 
find  a  short  name.  Its  aim  is  very  largely  destruc- 
tive; and  here  we  have  perhaps  the  influence  of 
Mr.  Belloc 's  Irish  blood.  He  is  not  only  *^agin" 
a  particular  Government,  but  ^^agin"  the  govern- 
ing conditions  of  all  Governments  at  all  likely  to 
be  formed  just  now.  Of  course,  it  is  no  necessary 
reproach  to  criticism  that  it  is  destructive.  As 
Mr.  Belloc  himself  quite  reasonably  says,  destruc- 
tive criticism  is  sometimes  the  only  sound  kind. 
If  free  love  or  State-aided  cannibalism  reach  the 
region  of  ** practical  politics,"  there  is  no  obliga- 
tion on  an  opponent  to  suggest  reforms  in  our 
marriage  laws  and  our  cookery  books;  it  is 
enough  for  him  to  oppose. 

There  need,  therefore,  be  little  sympathy  with 
the  people  who  meet  denunciations  of  alleged  evils 
by  the  question,  **What  do  you  propose  to  do 


ME.  HILAIRE  BELLOC  155 

yourself?"  If  Mr.  Belloc  thinks  some  modem 
Chancellors  of  the  Exchequer  are  capable  of 
malversation,  by  all  means  let  him  say  so  (taking 
his  own  risk  of  an  appearance  at  the  Old  Bailey), 
without  being  required  to  give  the  address  of  a 
model  Minister  of  Finance.  Possibly  destructive 
criticism  is  the  most  useful  and  patriotic  course  an 
independent  observer  can  at  present  pursue,  and 
these  are  days  when  essential  conservatism  must 
often  wear  a  revolutionary  aspect.  The  character- 
istic vice  of  modern  politicians  is  acting  first  and 
thinking  (if  at  all)  afterwards;  and  the  only  things 
they  incline  to  leave  alone  are  the  things  which 
really  do  cry  for  removal.  Never  was  there  more 
enthusiasm  of  pulling  down  houses  and  less  for 
emptying  dust-bins. 

A  truer  criticism  of  Mr.  Belloc  is,  not  that  he 
makes  no  positive  contribution  to  the  common 
stock  (in  fact,  he  has  made  many),  but  that  he 
habitually  indulges  in  an  over-emphasis  unjust 
to  himself  as  well  as  the  men  and  institutions  he 
attacks.  The  pleasant  land  of  France  (which 
can  make  itself  very  unpleasant  in  the  matter 
of  controversy)  is  no  doubt  chiefly  responsible 
once  more.  From  premises  to  syllogism,  Mr. 
Belloc  proceeds  as  directly  as  one  of  those  poplar- 
lined  military  roads  he  loves,  trampling  without 
ruth   on   all   that   lies   between.     **  Given   certain 


156  ALL  AND  SUNDRY 

conditions,  certain  results  will  happen.  Here  are 
the  conditions :  it  is  I,  moi  qui  parle,  who  tell  you, 
and  that's  an  end  on't;  the  results  have  already 
happened,  and  will  be  visible  on  Tuesday  week 
at  latest. ' '  You  may  be,  probably  will  be,  silenced, 
if  not  perfectly  convinced,  for  it  needs  a  strong 
head  and  a  stout  heart  to  withstand  the  full 
Belloc  armament:  the  skilful  artillery  preparation 
of  high-explosive  denunciation,  the  splendid  in- 
fantry work  of  argument  and  illustration,  and 
the  brilliant  cavalry  sabre-strokes  of  satire  and 
invective.  But  if  you  persist  in  intimating  a 
doubt,  Mr.  Belloc  either  pities  you  as  a  fool 
or  denounces  you  as  something  worse.  You  are 
classed  with  the  Puritans  who  would  veto  beer, 
the  brewers  who  would  water  it,  the  cosmopolitan 
Jews  who  are  engaged  in  a  conspiracy  against 
nationality,  or  the  Servile-State  advocates  who 
are  plotting  against  freedom.  You  may  even  be 
placed  in  the  lowest  depth  of  all,  with  Alfred, 
Viscount  Northcliffe,  whom  Mr.  Belloc  often  calls 
a  *  ^fellow.'' 

We  know  how  the  use  of  that  word  temporarily 
disturbed  the  good  understanding  between  Mr. 
Pickwick  and  Mr.  Tupman,  and  the  spirit  of  revolt 
which  Mr.  Belloc  is  apt  to  engender  does  no  doubt 
detract  from  his  influence  as  a  teacher.  No  reason- 
able man  will  complain  that  Mr.  Belloc  sometimes 


MR.  HILAIRE  BELLOC  157 

dismisses  an  opponent  by  calling  him  a  fool  or 
a  rascal.  If  easy,  it  is  sometimes  most  effective; 
and  undeniably  there  are  great  numbers  of  fools 
and  rascals.  But  there  are  other  kinds,  too,  and 
the  charge  of  folly  or  rascality  tends  to  become 
less  rather  than  more  convincing  when  spread 
over  a  large  body  of  defendants.  When  the  dock 
contains  a  majority  it  ceases  to  be  a  place  of 
peculiar  infamy. 

It  is  this  ** little  more,'*  giving  earnestness  the 
aspect  of  fanaticism  and  strong  individuality  the 
savour  of  crankiness,  that  diminishes  the  authority 
to  which  Mr.  Belloc's  great  parts  really  entitle 
him.  Thus  he  argues,  very  reasonably,  that  the 
Jew  occupies  a  special  position  in  the  modern 
State,  that  he  is  always  a  problem,  and  some- 
times a  danger.  The  point  has  been  put  epigram- 
matically  by  Mr.  Chesterton.  A  nation,  he  says, 
consists  of  families,  but  there  are  some  Jewish 
families  which  consist  of  several  nations.  Jewish 
idealism,  like  Jewish  finance,  cannot  have  it  both 
ways.  It  cannot  expect  to  exert  a  specific  in- 
fluence without  meeting  a  specific  criticism.  It 
cannot  claim  a  special  position  for  the  Jew  as 
a  Jew,  without  raising  the  question  of  the  Jew 
as  a  citizen.  But  Mr.  Belloc  seems  to  go  much 
farther.  He  takes  rather  the  line  of  the  orthodox 
seventeenth-century    lEnglishman    to    the    Roman 


158  ALL  AND  SUNDRY 

Catholic.  A  sincere  Roman  Catholic  must  be  a 
bad  subject,  an  insincere  Roman  Catholic  must 
be  a  bad  man;  ergOy  place  all  Roman  Catholics 
under  the  ban.  Mr.  Belloc  and  his  followers 
appear  to  argue  that  a  Jew  whose  sympathies 
extend  to  his  co-religionists  in  other  countries 
must  be  a  bad,  or  at  least,  an  undependable  citizen 
on  that  special  ground;  while  a  Jew  so  base  as 
to  care  nothing  for  Jewry  will  be  a  bad  citizen 
because  he  is  a  mean  and  bad  sort  of  man.  Hence 
all  Jews  are  suspect;  and,  as  in  the  case  of  game, 
the  higher  the  Jew  the  nearer  he  is  to  corrup- 
tion. To  many  people  the  indictment  would  be 
more  convincing  if  there  were  something  less 
of  it. 

It  is  the  same  with  Mr.  Belloc 's  attacks  on 
Parliamentary  corruption  and  the  party  system, 
secret  funds,  sale  of  honours,  traffic  in  places  and 
policies,  and  so  forth.  The  House  of  Commons 
may  not  be  the  *^ vilest  and  dirtiest  society'' 
imaginable,  but  it  does  include  a  great  number  of 
self-seekers,  a  fair  number  of  generally  undesirable 
people,  and  not  a  few  downright  rascals.  The 
inmaense  strength  of  the  machine,  the  progressive 
enslavement  of  the  private  member,  the  general 
lowering  of  tone,  and  the  growing  tendency  of 
party  managers  to  cultivate  very  rich  men,  un- 
deniably provide   conditions  highly  dangerous  to 


MR.  HILAIRE  BELLOC  159 

the  purity  of  public  life.  It  may  not  be,  as  Mr. 
Belloc  alleges,  that  the  Party  System  is  a  One- 
Party  System,  that  the  ceaseless  strife  of  Parlia- 
ment, Press,  and  platform  is  merely  a  wearisome 
form  of  comedy,  that  the  two  Front  Benches, 
ostensibly  opposed,  are  really  in  collusion,  and 
that  they  are  commonly  the  obedient  agents  of  the 
moneyed  classes  who  provide  the  funds  of  both. 
But  obviously  there  must  be  a  good  deal  of  sham 
about  the  **  organised  quarreP*  when  we  find  Sir 
Edward  Carson  on  the  friendliest  terms  with 
many  of  the  members  of  the  Government  he  defied. 
It  may  not  be  evidence  of  insincerity  that  men 
politically  opposed  will  meet  at  the  same  dinner- 
table,  or  drive  from  the  same  tee.  But  we  may 
be  pretty  sure  that,  if  they  do,  their  differences 
are  not  very  deep. 

Mr.  Belloc  has  been  criticised  because  he  will 
have  nothing  to  do  with  this  amenity,  but  with 
passionate  energy  *^ damns,'*  from  every  point 
of  view,  the  man  he  has  no  mind  to  politically. 
Here,  again,  he  is  very  French,  and  also  very 
reasonable.  He  is  in  earnest  about  principles, 
while  British  politicians  are  apt  to  be  lukewarm 
about  everything  but  interests.  That  tolerance 
on  which  we  plume  ourselves  is  really  no  great 
matter  for  pride.  It  only  means  that  we  bring 
to  a  game  the  spirit  in  which  a  game  should  be 


160  ALL  AND  SUNDRY 

played.  If  the  game  by  any  chance  became  earnest 
another  spirit  would  soon  appear.  There  was 
much  earnestness,  and  little  tolerance,  in  Castle- 
reagh's  time. 

It  is  rather,  indeed,  by  the  diffusion  than  the 
ferocious  intensity  of  his  attack  that  Mr.  Belloc 
tends  to  defeat  his  own  purpose.  Attempts  to 
paint  a  whole  town  red  usually  leave  the  town 
much  its  original  colour,  and  incidentally  disaster 
generally  follows  to  the  artist.  Much  the  same 
may  be  said  of  attempts  to  paint  a  multitude 
black.  A  few  enthusiasts,  indeed,  will  cry  with 
ecstasy  that  everybody  is  very  black  indeed;  but 
the  great  majority,  seeing  only  much  grey  and  a 
little  white,  will  rather  infer  colour-blindness  in 
the  critic,  and  may  even  be  led  to  overlook  the 
presence  of  indubitable  negroes. 

The  same  exaggeration  which  produces  fanatics 
in  small  numbers  breeds  infidels  by  the  million; 
and  a  little  more  moderation  would  have  given 
Mr.  Belloc  a  larger  and  perhaps  not  less  sincere 
following.  It  would  certainly  have  ensured  a  more 
serious  consideration  of  his  extremely  acute  and 
suggestive  analysis  of  the  tendency  to  what  he 
calls  the  Servile- State.  As  it  is,  there  are  a 
number  of  devoted  disciples  who  see  another  step 
to  servitude  in  every  administrative  and  legislative 
act,  and  a  great  mass  of  sceptics  who  believe  the 


MR.  HILAIRE  BELLOC  161 

thing,  as  well  as  the  name,  to  be  a  pure  invention 
of  Mr.  Belloc's. 

The  sceptics  are  probably  more  wrong  than  the 
faithful;  the  danger  which  Mr.  Belloo  has  made 
clearer  (if  it  is  an  exaggeration  to  speak  of  him 
as  a  sort  of  sociological  Columbus)  might  well 
receive  more  attention.  But  it  is,  in  some  ways, 
Mr.  Belloc's  own  fault  that  opinion  is  thus  un- 
satisfactorily divided.  It  is  the  penalty  of  the 
** little  more.'* 


THE  DUKE  OF  SOMEKSET 

During  the  Budget  campaign,  when  *Hhe  Dukes'' 
were  being  violently  assailed,  Lord  Eosebery  de- 
clared that  they  were,  on  the  whole,  a  **poor  but 
honest  class.'' 

If  we  accept  this  view,  Algernon  St.  Maur, 
fifteenth  Duke  of  Somerset  (bearing  the  title  first 
conferred  on  that  *^ Protector"  Somerset  who  from 
the  beginning  failed  to  protect  anything  but  his 
own  interests,  and  ultimately  failed  even  in  that), 
must  be  deemed  a  highly  representative  Duke. 
It  is  certain  that  he  is  honest;  his  poverty  is  a 
constant  theme  of  the  writers  of  ** gossip"  in  the 
popular  papers.  Whenever  the  Duke  and  his 
charming  Duchess  do  anything  remarkable — and 
even  more  often  when  they  do  things  quite  ordi- 
nary— the  public  is  reminded  of  their  comparative 
destitution.  **I  saw  the  Duke  of  Somerset  getting 
out  of  a  taxi  in  Grosvenor  Square,"  writes  ** Peep- 
ing Tom"  in  **Club  Chatter."  '*It  was  curious 
to  note  with  what  skill  he  opened  the  cab-door 
for  himself,  the  driver  obdurately  declining,  as 
drivers  do  in  these  levelling  times,  to  get  down 
from  his  seat.  But  duris  urgens  m  rebus  egestas, 
as  Jowett  used  to  say  to  me  in  my  Balliol  days; 

162 


THE  DUKE  OF  SOMERSET  163 

and  the  Duke  has  known  what  it  is  to  rough  it. 
Everybody  knows,  etc.*'  **I  saw  the  Duke's  Her- 
culean figure  in  the  Park,"  says  Lady  Godiva  in 
** Social  Jottings."  *'He  looked  so  good-humoured 
and  ^nice.'  But  then  he  is  one  of  the  very  nicest 
of  our  Dukes.  Poverty  has  not  embittered  him. 
Lady  Teazle  tells  me  when  he  succeeded  to  the 
title  he  had  hardly  a  picture;  and  it  was  really 
pathetic  to  see  him  taking  home  *The  SouPs  Awak- 
ening' and  'The  Harvest  Moon'  in  photogravure 
to  give  something  of  a  home  appearance  to 
Grosvenor  Square.  Of  course,  things  are  better 
now,  and  just  before  the  war  Victorian  R.A.'s 
were  within  the  reach  of  the  poorest.  But  the 
Duke  never  faltered  during  all  the  long  struggle 
and  has  absolutely  no  envy  for  the  really  well- 
to-do." 

From  such  gossip  the  uninstructed  in  these 
matters  might  infer  a  sort  of  Ravenswood  living 
in  a  ruinous  house  with  some  old  Caleb  Balder- 
stone  as  sole  attendant.  But,  of  course,  things 
are  not  quite  as  the  plutocrats  of  journalism  (who 
describe  ten  complicated  courses  as  ** To-day's 
Simple  Luncheon")  picture  them.  Poverty  is  a 
relative  thing;  and  judged  by  ordinary  work-a- 
day  standards  the  Duke  of  Somerset  is  quite 
tolerably  off.  He  has,  it  is  true,  only  twenty-five 
thousand  acres,  and  of  his  three  country  places 


164  ALL  AND  SUNDRY 

Maiden  Bradley  is  the  only  one  that  really  counts; 
Burton  Hall,  Loughborough,  and  Berry  Pomeroy, 
near  Totnes,  simply  look  well  on  the  landscape  and 
in  the  reference  books.  But  Grosvenor  Square 
cannot  be  called  a  cheap  part  of  London;  and 
*' big-game  hunting  in  all  parts  of  the  world '*  is 
not  to  be  had  for  the  price  of  a  little  rabbit- 
shooting.  The  Duke  has  hunted  big  game  every- 
where, except  in  politics;  ** seals''  have  never  been 
in  his  line.  The  Duchess  has  pursued  big  game 
with  him  in  Canada,  and  written  delightfully 
of  her  experiences  there;  her  ** Impressions  of  a 
Tenderfoot''  are  good  reading  for  those  who  like 
that  sort  of  thing.  But  then  the  Duchess  is  in 
most  ways  decidedly  talented.  She  can  paint, 
turn  out  a  neat  copy  of  patriotic  verses,  organise 
**days,"  manage  Primrose  Leagues,  and  write 
piquant  letters  to  The  Times,  She  has  the  rep- 
utation of  a  charming  hostess,  and  of  a  veritable 
Lady  Bountiful  among  the  non-ducal  poor  of  her 
country. 

If  the  poverty  of  the  St.  Maurs  is  relative  their 
honesty  is  absolute.  They  make  no  pretence  of 
being  what  they  are  not,  or  of  not  being  what 
they  are.  They  are  very  perfect  specimens  of 
one  sort  of  English  Tory.  The  aspect  of  Toryism 
which  the  Duke  represents  is  not,  indeed,  its 
most  gracious   side.     With  the  broader  creative 


THE  DUKE  OF  SOMERSET  165 

policy  of  Toryism  he  has  nothing  in  common;  he 
is  simply  the  ** Everlasting  Nay'*  incarnate.  He 
would  agree  with  Swift  that  **law  in  a  free  country 
is,  or  ought  to  be,  the  determination  of  the  majority 
of  those  who  have  property  in  land."  He  seems 
to  believe,  literally,  that  the  aim  of  all  good 
government  is  to  maintain  the  Duke  of  Somerset, 
with  others  who  more  or  less  imperfectly  resemble 
him,  in  the  position  to  which  an  all-wise  Provi- 
dence has  called  him.  All  government  which  fails 
to  proceed  on  that  premise  is  bad  government.  If, 
accepting  the  premise,  it  allows  itself  to  be  over- 
borne by  circumstances,  then  it  is  cowardly  gov- 
ernment. From  the  library  of  Maiden  Bradley 
the  Duke  fulminates  equally  against  the  pred- 
atory Radical,  the  subversive  Labour  man,  and  the 
timid  Conservative.  Mr.  Lloyd  George  he  views 
with  a  sleepless  suspicion.  It  was,  indeed,  too 
much  to  expect  the  chief  of  sinners  against  prop- 
erty to  be  sincerely  converted  into  its  defender 
and  guardian;  yet  the  Duke  did  seem  to  hope 
for  some  short  space.  But  latterly  he  has  be«n 
bitterly  disappointed  in  the  Prime  Minister;  sus- 
pects him  of  sympathy  with  Bolshevism;  deplores 
his  poltroonery  in  dealing  with  strikers;  is  very 
much  afraid  he  will  be  after  domestic  hen-roosts 
now  the  foreign  wolf  ^s  teeth  have  been  duly  drawn. 
*' Spoliation"  is  what  the  Duke  fears   from  any 


166  ALL  AND  SUNDRY 

poor-spirited  and  venal  Minister  who  is  at  all 
likely  to  wield  the  ^* spigot  of  taxation"  in  these 
days.  And  against  ** spoliation"  he  proposes  to 
fight.  To  that  end  he  is  President  of  something 
called  the  Liberty  and  Property  Defence  League, 
on  behalf  of  which  he  writes  long  letters  to  the 
papers,  full  of  sounding  phrases:  ** threatened  en- 
croachment," ** victims  of  confiscatory  legislation," 
and  the  like.  The  Duke,  a  very  large  man,  with 
a  tendency  to  fluster  and  bluster,  cannot  be  de- 
scribed as  a  skilled  controversialist;  he  makes 
no  attempt  to  present  his  case  in  the  most  attrac- 
tive light,  and  his  simple  **Damn  their  imperence" 
attitude  towards  ** Labour"  must  at  times  give 
infinite  concern  to  more  wary  politicians  who  are 
probably  not  unsympathetic  to  him  on  general 
grounds.  Hence  he  ploughs  a  rather  lonely  furrow. 
From  the  frequent  appeals  for  subscriptions  it 
may  be  inferred  that  the  Liberty  and  Property 
Defence  League  is  not  a  large  or  prosperous  or- 
ganisation. The  *^  property-owning  and  trading 
classes,"  taken  generally,  evidently  do  not  want  to 
enlist  under  the  Duke's  banner  and  fight  his  battle 
as  well  as  their  own.  Possibly  they  are  wise.  The 
Duke  is  a  Duke  who  is  nothing  but  a  Duke,  and 
there  is  a  decided  slump  in  Dukes  as  Dukes. 

Society  at  the  moment  may  be  compared  to  a 
ship  in  distress.    When  it  is  fine  weather  the  first- 


THE  DUKE  OF  SOMERSET  167 

dass  passengers  are  people  of  great  importance, 
and  the  fo 'castle  hands  are  people  of  very  little. 
Three  solid  meals  a  day,  with  beef-tea  at  eleven, 
tea  at  four,  and  biscuits  at  ten,  are  the  portion 
of  the  cabin;  the  nourishment  of  the  fo 'castle 
is  a  more  obscure  subject.  But  when  the  storm 
comes  the  meals  of  the  first-class  passenger  sink 
to  altogether  secondary  importance,  and  even  his 
trunks  have  to  go  overboard  if  it  comes  to  a 
question  of  saving  the  ship.  In  such  circumstances 
the  less  the  first-class  passenger  says  the  better ;  he 
must  not  be  *  louder  than  the  weather"  or  he  will 
provoke  from  some  rude  bo 'sun  (who,  after  all, 
is  doing  his  work)  the  retort,  **Give  thanks  that 
you  have  lived  so  long,  and  make  yourself  ready 
in  your  cabin  for  the  mischance  of  the  hour,  if 
it  so  hap." 

There  are  plenty  of  first-class  passengers  (Dukes 
among  them)  working;  still  more  bearing  them- 
selves stoically,  as  the  times  demand,  since  they 
can  do  no  more.  But  to  the  minority,  whom  the 
Duke  of  Somerset  seems  to  represent,  who  can 
wonder  if  the  working  mariner  cries,  somewhat 
discourteously,  **A  plague  upon  this  howling;  you 
mar  our  labours;  you  do  assist  the  storm"? 


SIE  THOMAS  BEECHAM 

Always  an  interesting  man,  Sir  Thomas  Beecham 
is  just  now  at  the  most  interesting  stage  of  his 
career.  The  coin  that  is  to  decide  his  larger  future 
is  still  spinning;  all  depends  on  how  it  comes 
down.  Heads  he  wins;  tails  he  does  not  exactly 
lose;  it  is  only  a  question  whether  his  name  shall 
be  written  in  water  or  in  material  lasting  as  **the 
gilded  monuments  of  princes'' — the  reference,  of 
course,  is  not  to  the  Albert  Memorial. 

For  in  the  narrower  sense  Sir  Thomas  has 
undoubtedly  arrived;  there  is  no  further  question 
as  to  his  talents  as  a  conductor.  Even  after  his 
** campaign  of  Italy,''  twelve  years  ago,  some 
disposition  existed  to  regard  him  as  a  dilettante. 
There  is  always  that  feeling  when  an  Englishman 
of  means  takes  to  any  of  the  arts;  the  notion 
derives  from  a  Puritanism  even  more  convinced 
of  the  frivolity  than  of  the  wickedness  of  fiddling 
playing,  and  painting;  our  stern  ancestors  saw  a 
certain  common  sense  in  a  rich  man  going  to  the 
devil  through  cards,  wine,  or  woman,  but  thought 
it  merely  stupid  that  anybody  should  imperil  his 
soul  for  the  satisfaction  of  dominating  cat-gut  or 

168 


SIE  THOMAS  BEECHAM  169 

camel-hair.  But  Sir  Thomas  has  long  outlived 
this  stage;  whatever  else  he  may  or  may  not  be, 
he  is  now  acknowledged  as  a  very  serious  artist, 
and  a  very  considerable  and  individual  one.  It 
remains  to  be  seen  whether  he  will  realise  his 
much  higher  ambition  of  being,  so  to  speak,  the 
Monk  of  an  English  musical  restoration.  **  Great 
wits  are  sure  to  madness  near  allied, '*  but  even 
thinner  partitions  separate  the  enthusiast  from 
the  crank;  and  it  is  often  only  the  accident  of  the 
time  that  gives  to  a  man  of  one  idea  the  stature 
and  lineaments  of  the  hero.  But  for  a  thousand 
accidents  Cobden  would  have  died  a  local  crank, 
and  Rousseau  would  have  survived  only  to  furnish 
easy  **copy*'  to  Mr.  E.  V.  Lucas.  In  the  same 
way  Sir  Thomas  Beecham,  born  twenty  years 
earlier,  might  well  have  harboured  only  an  un- 
productive bee  in  his  bonnet.  But  he  has  been 
lucky  in  coming  to  manhood  at  a  time  most  favour- 
able to  the  reformer — and  by  no  means  unfavour- 
able to  the  quack.  With  the  new  century  there 
came  a  general  thaw.  The  ice  of  the  old  Vic- 
torian compromise  and  self-satisfaction  broke 
finally  up,  and  strong  currents  began  to  flow.  In 
every  department,  from  economics  to  frocks,  there 
arose  a  temper  at  once  sceptical  and  eager,  be- 
lieving in  nothing  but  anxious  to  attempt  all 
things.     To  these  crusaders  without  a  faith  use 


170  ALL  AND  SUNDEY 

and  wont  became  the  one  thing  intolerable;  yon 
could  go  backwards  to  guilds  and  Gothic  with 
Mr.  Chesterton,  or  forward  to  socialism  and  re- 
inforced concrete  with  Mr.  Wells;  but  you  must 
not  stand  still.  The  world  of  music  felt  the  im- 
pulse like  other  worlds,  and  under  its  influence 
rapidly  ran  through  the  usual  course  of  revolutions 
— Gironde,  Mountain,  Terror,  Directory.  The  last 
stage  is  still  to  come.  Will  it  be  through  Sir 
Thomas  Beecham  or  another? 

It  can  still  only  be  said  that  he  is  qualified  by 
a  quite  unusual  combination  of  qualities  to  give 
rule  to  chaos.  His  enthusiasm  is  very  real.  He 
comes  from  the  North,  where  the  love  of  music 
is  a  deeper  passion  than  anywhere  else  in  England. 
The  North  was  the  last  part  of  England  to  be 
civilised;  it  was  the  first  to  yield  to  modern  in- 
dustrialism; and  the  very  haste  of  this  latter 
process  has  only  strengthened  the  moral  rampart 
that  divides  it  from  the  South.  The  old  religion 
is  stronger;  the  old  manners  cling  to  a  larger 
class;  the  *^ parish  walk"  survives;  children  dance 
round  the  maypole;  captains  of  industry,  while 
sending  their  sons  to  Oxford,  eat  goose  at  high 
tea.  Here  also  the  old  English  love  of  music 
remains  less  distorted  than  anywhere.  It  is  still 
a  popular  thing;  rough  men  break  naturally  into 
song,  and  many  of  them  spend  their  evenings  in 


SIR  THOMAS  BEECHAM  171 

a  kind  of  music  which  farther  South  would  be 
the  hall-mark  of  ** culture."  Sir  Thomas  Beecham 
was  musical  from  his  cradle.  His  father  was 
musical  before  him.  He  was,  of  course,  the  great 
**pillionaire,"  who  began  by  selling  his  wares  in 
St.  Helens  market-place,  and  ended  by  leaving 
one  of  the  largest  of  second-class  fortunes.  Lan- 
cashire people  still  remember  the  excellent  little 
song-books  in  which  Beecham 's  Pills  were  adver- 
tised. This  was,  it  may  be  guessed,  more  than 
the  device  of  a  smart  speculator;  it  was  Joseph 
Beecham 's  second  passion  seeking  satisfaction. 
For  he  had  a  genuine  love  of  song,  and  a 
genuine  wish  to  extend  the  love  of  it;  as  a 
lad  he  spent  his  shillings  on  seats  for  the 
opera,  and  when  he  arrived  at  great  wealth 
nothing  gave  him  more  pleasure  than  bestowing 
musical  largesse,  ranging  from  organs  for 
churches  and  chapels  to  generous  opera  guaran- 
tees. 

From  this  North- Country  worthy  Sir  Thomas 
Beecham  has  inherited  a  certain  business  shrewd- 
ness in  odd  contrast  with  his  Bohemianism  and 
his  disinterested  fervour  for  his  art.  He  has  the 
paternal  talent  for  advertising.  He  is  not  only 
determined  to  make  opera,  especially  opera  in 
English,  worth  many  guineas  a  box  and  a  fair 
number  of  shillings  a  seat,  but  he  is  careful  that 


172  ALL  AND  SUNDEY 

the  public  shall  not  forget  him  or  it.  He  may 
not  have  deliberately  adopted  certain  mannerisms, 
as  Disraeli  did  his  glaring  waistcoats  and  his  elf- 
locks:  to  emphasise  his  personality  when  every 
gun  had  to  count.  But  it  is  certain  that,  as  he 
has  passed  from  success  to  success,  he  has  gained 
in  simplicity  as  well  as  in  power.  His  gestures 
become  constantly  more  restrained.  His  beard, 
once  an  unadulterated  joy  to  the  caricaturist, 
grows  less  remarkable.  The  caricaturist  will  not 
give  it  up  unless  forced,  but  it  is  now  nothing 
very  much  out  of  the  common  as  a  beard,  though 
Sir  Thomas  remains  much  out  of  the  common  as 
a  man.  For  there  is  in  him  a  wealth  of  artistic 
temperament  wholly  independent  of  tricks  and 
fashions.  He  combines  an  enormous  energy  with 
a  plentiful  lack  of  system.  He  has  a  sublime 
disregard  for  detail.  He  is  the  despair  of  people 
who  make  appointments;  he  has  a  trick  of  being 
in  Paris  when  he  is  expected  in  Glasgow,  and  of 
turning  up  in  London,  Monte-Cristo  fashion,  on 
the  last  stroke  of  the  last  hour.  There  is  no 
greater  optimist;  whatever  the  state  of  prepara- 
tion he  is  sure  of  everything  being  **all  right  on 
the  night,"  and  somehow  he  has  all  the  British 
luck  of  *' muddling  through''  with  brilliant  suc- 
cess. Perhaps  it  is  not  quite  luck;  he  has  a 
talent  for   improvisation  closely   akin  to   genius, 


SIR  THOMAS  BEECHAM  173 

and  difficulty  acts  on  him  like  wine.  There  have 
been  generals  who  could  never  show  their  high- 
est qualities  without  getting  into  a  tangle  at 
the  start,  and  the  greatest  of  Beecham  triumphs 
have  often  been  snatched  from  the  very  jaws  of 
disaster. 

But  it  is  mainly  as  a  man  with  a  mission  that 
Sir  Thomas  Beecham  stands  out  from  all  living 
musicians.  His  mission  is  not  so  easily  defined. 
It  is  really  nothing  so  narrow  as  **  Opera  in 
English '';  that  belongs  to  the  advertising  side 
of  the  artist.  All  opera  is  really  performed  in 
a  special  opera  language,  and  nobody  cares  in 
the  least  what  tongue  the  singer  would  employ 
to  ask  for  the  mustard.  Nor  has  Sir  Thomas 
any  stupid  notion  of  being  ** All-British''  in  an 
affair  that  knows  no  frontiers.  He  is  rather 
concerned  in  bringing  the  English  back  to  their 
old  station  as  a  singing  and  song-loving  people, 
appreciative  of  all  good  things,  and  capable  of 
good  things  of  their  own.  After  all  the  man  who 
appreciates  excellent  port  will  not  tolerate  bad 
beer;  and  when  there  is  a  demand  for  good  things 
of  any  kind  the  supply  is  pretty  certain  to  come. 
Sir  Thomas  Beecham 's  true  aim  is  to  make  music 
in  England  a  real  thing  by  making  it  a  democratic 
thing.  He  wants  to  make  it  something  with  a 
root,  self-supporting,  and  self-propagating.     For 


174  ALL  AND  SUNDRY 

the  secret  of  all  vital  art,  like  the  secret  of  the 
flower,  lies  below.  The  ultra-aristocratic  view  of 
the  arts,  which  reached  its  culmination  in  Wilde's 
generalisation  that  everything  popular  must  be 
bad,  is  based  on  a  confusion  of  ideas.  It  postu- 
lates the  gardener  as  more  important  than  the 
soil.  Assuredly  you  are  likely  to  get  finer  roses 
in  a  Duke's  pleasance  than  in  a  neglected  back- 
garden.  But  all  the  Duke's  staff  can  only  direct 
and  modify  the  forces  of  nature;  and  if  the  Duke 
can  command  no  suitable  soil  he  must  needs  go 
without  roses  altogether,  or  buy  them  from  the 
nearest  market.  It  is  much  the  same  with  art. 
Art  may  be  a  cut  flower,  or  a  parasitic  growth, 
or  a  healthy,  open-air,  sturdy  thing,  according 
as  the  nation  generally  feels  about  it.  In  paint- 
ing there  was  the  cut-flower  period,  when  we  im- 
ported Flemings,  Italians,  and  Frenchmen,  from 
Holbein  to  Verrio,  to  supply  the  needs  of  a  very 
limited  circle.  Then  succceeded  what  may  be  called 
the  hothouse  period,  which  still  exists;  there  is 
a  luxuriant  and  even  rank  growth  in  response  to 
liberal  manuring  of  gold.  The  third  stage  has 
not  yet  been  reached  in  any  general  sense,  though 
more  than  one  stately  forest  tree  has  grown  up 
here  and  there  by  sheer  luck.  The  truth  is  that 
the  greatest  art  matures  only  among  peoples  with 
a  very  widespread  love  of  art.    A  narrow  circle 


SIR  THOMAS  BEECHAM  175 

of  connoisseurship,  though  it  may  be  invaluable 
in  giving  direction,  cannot  supply  the  necessary 
inspiration.  Popes,  kings,  and  nobles  are  often 
excellent  gardeners,  but  the  soil  is  the  common 
man,  and  where  the  populace  is  coarse  in  taste 
the  aristocracy  will  almost  certainly  be  either  un- 
refined, or  foreign  in  its  refinement.  When  any 
art  is  healthy  it  will  appeal  most  strongly  to  the 
finest,  but  it  will  also  have  some  appeal  to  the 
coarsest,  and  art  is  always  on  the  way  to  decay 
when  it  sets  up  as  a  sort  of  mystery  to  be  under- 
stood only  by  people  expensively  educated.  If 
every  British  householder  delighted  in  water- 
colours,  however  crude  his  taste,  there  would  cer- 
tainly grow  up  schools  of  British  water-colour 
very  vital  and  admirable,  though  probably  very 
unlike  anything  now  approved  by  connoisseurs. 
The  glory  of  the  Dutch  school  was  simply  an  ex- 
ample of  supply  following  demand.  In  the  same 
way,  if  the  English  masses  were  once  seriously 
interested  in  music,  we  should  soon  have,  first 
rude  life,  and  then  tempered  strength,  in  musical 
composition.  That  is  why  Sir  Thomas  Beecham 
is  supremely  right  in  seeking  to  make  opera 
popular  and  to  make  opera  pay;  there  can  be 
no  genuine  life  in  an  institution  that  depends  on 
the  patronage  of  the  wealthy.  And  it  is  probably 
fortunate  that  he  unites  with  the  fire  of  the  artist 


176  ALL  AND  SUNDRY 

something  of  the  talent  of  the  showman.  The  first 
necessity  for  anything  that  wants  to  succeed  now- 
adays is  to  get  itself  talked  about,  and  Sir  Thomas 
Beecham  gives  no  newspaper  reader  an  excuse 
for  knowing  nothing  about  ** Opera  in  English." 


MR.  RUDYARD  KIPLING 

"For,  as  a  surfeit  of  the  sweetest  things 
The  deepest  loathing  to  the  stomach  brings; 
Or  as  the  heresies  that  men  do  leave 
Are  hated  most  of  those  they  did  deceive; 
So  thou,  my  surfeit  and  my  heresy, 
Of  all  be  hated,  but  the  most  of  me," — 

Midsummer-Nighfa  Dream. 

Mr.  Kipling  came  to  England  about  the  time  of 
the  first  great  influenza  epidemic,  and  his  popu- 
larity for  long  followed  much  the  same  course  as 
the  disease.  At  first  it  swept  all  before  it;  this 
devastation  was  followed  by  a  period  of  compara- 
tive immunity;  then  the  plague  returned  in  some- 
what diminished  virulence;  and  since  there  have 
been  alternations  of  ebb  and  flow,  each  attack 
being  feebler  than  the  last.  The  cleanest  bill 
of  health,  so  far  as  Kiplingism  was  concerned, 
synchronised  with  the  Great  War.  Mr.  Kipling 
is  not,  perhaps,  altogether  a  spent  force.  But  it 
seems  safe  to  say  that  he  will  never  again  be 
more  than  a  minor  one. 

It  is  curious  at  this  time  to  recall  the  prodigious 
boom  of  the  late  eighties  and  early  nineties. 
About  the  time  that  the  first  Jubilee  procession 

177 


178  ALL  AND  SUNDRY 

was  trailing  through  the  streets  of  London,  dis- 
figured with  a  leprosy  of  five-guinea  seats,  a 
short-sighted,  rather  untidy  young  man,  lightly 
enough  regarded  hy  his  editor,  sat  in  inked  and 
crumpled  whites  in  the  office  of  the  Allahahad 
Pioneer,  scribbling  in  his  spare  time  squibs, 
sketches,  and  stories  of  Indian  life.  Two  or  three 
years  later  publishers  and  editors  were  fighting 
for  his  lightest  word.  Critics  were  ranking  him 
with  the  immortals.  A  cloud  of  imitators,  com- 
mentators, and  parodists,  in  Gibbonian  phrase, 
** obscured  the  face  of  literature.''  Newspaper 
writers  competed  with  each  other  as  to  which 
should  use  oftenest  the  adjective  **far-flung.'' 

A  very  few  kept  their  heads.  The  fastidious 
Oscar  Wilde  described  the  newcomer  as  a  genius 
who  ** dropped  his  aspirates,"  and  ** emitted  splen- 
did flashes  of  vulgarity."  Mr.  Chesterton  ad- 
mired his  talent,  but  reprobated  his  spirit,  and 
spoke  (perhaps  unjustly)  of  the  famed  **  Reces- 
sional" as  the  outpouring  of  a  ** solemn  cad." 
But  these  voices  of  disapproval  or  of  limited 
eulogy  were  lost  in  the  general  roar  of  unmeasured 
applause.  Mr.  Kipling  conquered  every  circle. 
Literary  men  dwelt  on  the  perfection  of  his  method, 
and  rather  rashly  assumed  a  permanent  value 
for  much  that  was  little  more  than  clever  instan- 
taneous photography.     Some   Churchmen  praised 


MR.  BUD  YARD  KIPLING  179 

his  religious  poems  in  language  which  might  seem 
a  little  extravagant  for  Isaiah.  The  suburban 
young  man  murmured  **  Fuzzy  Wuzzy'*  or  *^  Gen- 
tleman Rankers''  while  he  shaved,  and  vaguely 
felt  himself  a  man  of  action.  The  young  lady 
of  Streatham  revelled  in  the  dawn  coming  up 
like  thunder  out  of  China  'crost  the  bay,  and  ex- 
perienced a  thrill  of  splendid  wickedness  when  she 
came  to  Suez  and  the  exploded  Ten  Command- 
ments. There  never  was  such  a  boom  before. 
There  has  been  none  such  since. 

And  here  we  arrive  at  the  old  question — Is  the 
Age  made  by  the  Man,  or  the  Man  by  the  Age? 
**The  great  man,"  says  Carlyle,  **was  always  as 
lightning  out  of  Heaven;  the  rest  of  men  waited 
for  him  like  fuel,  and  then  they,  too,  would  flame.*' 
I  shall  not  pretend  to  determine  whether  Mr. 
Kipling  was  lightning  from  Heaven,  or  the  more 
obscure  kind  of  fire  which  is  generated  by  a  fer- 
menting haystack.  Suffice  it  to  say  that  as  an 
author  he  was  most  fortunate  in  his  nativity. 
Whatever  we  may  think  of  his  message,  he  arrived 
in  the  very  nick  of  time  to  deliver  it. 

His  strident  trumpet  of  challenge  rang  out 
as  opportunely  as  the  defiance  of  the  unknown 
knight  in  ^^Ivanhoe."  It  broke  the  silence  that 
succeeds  a  finished  conflict;  it  smote  ears  ex- 
pectant of  little  but  boredom.    The  whole  audience 


180  ALL  AND  SUNDRY 

had  settled  down,  after  the  great  Victorian  show, 
to  munch  sandwiches  while  the  scene  was  being 
shifted  for  the  next  act.  Nobody  expected  a  new 
sensation  for  an  unconscionable  time  to  come,  and 
here  was  something  altogether  novel  and  moving. 
Something  like  a  Byzantine  lifelessness  had  fallen 
on  the  English  world  at  this  moment.  There 
probably  never  was  a  duller  time  than  the  middle 
eighties,  the  time  when  women  disfigured  their 
bodies  with  bustles  and  flounces,  and  men  their 
minds  with  an  affected  cynicism.  It  was  a  sort 
of  spiritual  winter  solstice.  Everything  seemed 
to  have  stopped,  as  if  never  to  go  again.  Victoria 
appeared  immortal  in  England;  William  I.  in 
Germany.  On  the  Continent  reigned  the  iron 
frost  of  the  Bismarckian  terror.  France  was  sunk 
in  pessimism,  and  England  in  a  kind  of  optimism 
almost  worse;  she  had  persuaded  herself  that  all 
was  as  right  with  the  world  as  could  reasonably 
be  expected.  Churchmen,  smarting  from  a  thou- 
sand dialectical  shafts  from  the  hosts  of  Ration- 
alism, went  slumming  to  save  the  pain  of  thought. 
Huxley  and  the  Darwinians,  apparently  victorious 
in  the  great  evolution  controversy,  subsided  into 
mere  dogmatism.  The  **  advanced, ' '  sneering  at 
Heaven  and  the  Trinity,  twaddled  about  Mahatmas 
and  the  ** astral  plane.''  Nobody  (outside,  of 
course,  the  ranks  of  active  partisans)  believed  in 


MR.  RUDYARD  KIPLING  181 

Radicalism,  but  then  nobody  believed  in  Toryism 
either.  There  was  a  sort  of  Third  Republic  in 
letters,  the  reign  of  safe,  dull  men;  in  art  of  any 
kind  sincerity  was  considered  the  mark  of  the 
beast.  A  sense  of  finality  oppressed  society.  Even 
in  material  things  the  world  seemed  to  have  gone 
as  far  as  it  was  likely  to  go.  The  steam-engine, 
the  telephone,  the  ocean  cable  had  long  ceased 
to  be  marvels ;  the  motor-car,  the  X  ray,  the  phono- 
graph, the  kinema,  the  wireless  telegraph,  and 
the  aeroplane  were  still  unborn. 

To  this  bored  circle  Mr.  Kipling  was  as  welcome 
as  the  Prince  in  an  Arabian  tale  whose  incantation 
calls  to  life  an  enchanted  palace.  He  brought  with 
him  a  rush  of  fresh  air  (air  that  was  fresh  in  one 
sense,  at  least),  a  new  sensation,  a  new  romance, 
almost  a  new  religion.  The  frantic  delight  with 
which  he  was  received  is  eloquent  of  the  destitution 
of  the  audience.  Yet  it  would  be  a  mistake  to 
under-rate  the  genius  of  the  entertainer.  On  the 
face  of  things  he  chose  a  very  unpromising  field. 
Englishmen  as  a  whole  had  never  been  greatly 
interested  in  India.  They  had  the  exact  opposite 
of  interest  in  Englishmen  living  in  India.  Read 
any  novel  written  during  a  century  before  Kipling, 
and  you  are  pretty  sure  to  find  that  the  standard 
bore  is  somebody  like  Joss  Sedley.  It  was  a  per- 
formance of  the  very  highest  genius  to  take  the 


182  ALL  AND  SUNDRY 

narrow,  conventional  society  of  the  plains  and 
hills  and  invest  it  with  the  atmosphere  at  once 
of  romance  and  (within  certain  narrow  limits)  of 
palpitating  realism. 

Vitality  was  the  special  qnaHty  of  the  yonnger 
Kipling.  He  could  infuse  life  into  anything.  The 
life  was  often  spectral  and  even  devilish;  there  is, 
indeed,  little  really  human,  even  in  Mr.  Kipling's 
schoolboys.  But  he  gives  some  sort  of  tongue, 
and  some  sort  of  soul,  even  to  machinery;  it  may 
almost  be  said  that  his  machines  are  more  human 
than  his  men  and  women;  and  he  can  make  even 
a  smell  live.  Into  the  dull  Victorian  life  he  brought 
the  smell  of  the  bazaar,  of  the  jungle,  of  the 
hill-top  station,  of  the  baked  village  of  the  plains, 
of  the  steamy  Burma  port,  **  looking  lazy  to  the 
sea."  And  with  all  this  deviPs  broth  of  barbarian 
geography  he  mixed  the  ingredients  of  a  new 
witches'  caldron,  making  the  gruel  thick  and  slab 
with  lumps  of  life  as  he  saw  it.  He  presented, 
so  to  speak,  a  curried  version  of  the  world,  the 
jflesh,  and  the  devil,  spiced  with  the  sins  of 
** strong''  men  and  unpleasant  women,  going 
through  their  common  little  intrigues  and  talking 
their  banal  little  jargon  against  a  background  of 
outlandish  splendour.  The  appeal  to  the  home- 
keeping  Englishman  was  irresistible.  The  good 
and  the  bad  in  him  were  equally  flattered.    '* Don't 


MR.  RUDYARD  KIPLING  183 

be  ashamed  of  yourself  as  a  little  Cockney  cad," 
said  Mr.  Kipling,  in  effect,  *^  Jones,  who  is  wor- 
shipped as  a  god  round  about  Quetta,  was  much 
the  same  as  you.  You  also,  if  it  so  chanced  to 
you,  would  be  as  he.  For  you  are  of  the  breed 
within  the  law;  and,  being  within  the  law,  it  really 
doesn^t  matter  very  much  what  lawless  things  you 
do  in  the  smaller  way.''  It  was  old  Calvinism 
in  a  new  and  piquant  disguise. 

One  of  Mr.  Kipling's  earlier  critics  accused  him 
of  **the  affectation  of  barbarity."  As  we  now 
know,  the  barbarity  was  in  no  way  affected;  it 
was  innate.  Mr.  Kipling  is  personally  a  kindly 
man,  but  he  seems  to  have  in  himself  something 
not  himself  that  makes  for  savagery.  When  he 
rhapsodises  over  an  engine  one  feels  that  he  revels 
rather  in  its  terror  than  its  service,  that  he  thinks 
of  it  as  a  chained  monster,  and  half  wishes  the 
chains  would  break,  and  allow  it  to  show  fully 
the  demon  in  it.  When  he  deals  with  a  woman 
he  rejoices  equally  in  what  she  suffers  and  what 
she  inflicts;  he  has  no  sympathy  with  what  she 
can  give  or  enjoy.  As  to  his  males,  he  can  draw 
a  ruthless  man,  or  a  sensual  man,  or  a  slangy 
man,  or  a  man  who  talks  in  rather  nasal  tones  of 
duty  and  sacrifice;  he  has  still  to  show  his  under- 
standing of  an  average  Christian.  It  is  not  by 
accident    that   his    fancy    so    often    plays    round 


184  ALL  AND  SUNDRY 

prehistoric  man.    His  moderns  are  also  not  more 
than  neolithic. 

Significant,  again,  is  his  affection  for  the  Old 
Testament  and  his  odd  sympathy  with  less  gracious 
varieties  of  Christianity.  Throughont  the  rather 
confused  stuff  of  his  philosophy  runs  the  idea  of 
a  Chosen  Race ;  and  that,  the  most  pestilent  heresy 
that  can  seize  a  people,  really  threatened  to  possess 
us  during  the  temporary  loss  of  humour  induced 
possibly  by  too  many  Jubilee  processions.  Great 
Britain  caught  Mr.  Kipling  rather  badly,  and  was 
scarcely  more  than  convalescent  when  something 
happened  to  restore  her  balance.  That  something 
was  a  manifestation  of  the  same  disease  in  Ger- 
many. The  attack,  we  may  honestly  believe,  was 
much  worse  than  anything  we  suffered.  Old  na- 
tions will  survive  an  outbreak  of  smallpox  such 
as  destroys  many  a  savage  tribe.  But  we  really 
had  the  malady  in  pretty  severe  form.  Mr.  Kip- 
ling dominated  the  South  African  War;  his  part 
as  prophet  and  inspirer  during  the  greatest  of 
all  wars  has  been,  on  the  whole,  unequal  to  his 
position  in  letters.  In  his  anti-German  utterances, 
also,  one  seems  to  note  a  certain  embarrassment 
mingling  with  much  communicatory  fluency.  But, 
in  fact,  what  could  he  consistently  say?  How 
could  he  condemn  the  mean  thefts,  the  slave-raids 
and  brutalities  in  France  and  Belgium,  when  such 


MR.  RUDYARD  KIPLING  185 

a   thing   as   this    was   ready   to   rise  in  evidence 
against  him? 

"  Now  remember  when  you're  'acking  round  a  gilded  Bunnah  god, 
That  'is  eyes  is  very  often  precious  stones; 
An'  if  you  treat  a  nigger  to  a  dose  of  eleanin'-rod 

'E's  like  to  show  you  everything  'e  owns. 
When  'e  wont  prodooce  no  more,  pour  some  water  on  the  floor, 
Where  you  'ear  it  answer  'ollow  to  the  boot. 
(Cornet:  Toot!  Toot!) 
When  the  ground  begins  to  sink,  shove  your  baynick  down  the  chink. 
An'  you're  sure  to  touch  the  .   .   . 

(Chorus)  Loo!  Loo!  Lulu!  Loot!  Loot!  Loot! 
Ow  the  loot!  " 

Truly  those  who  saw  fun  in  this  sort  of  thing, 
and  allowed  it  without  protest  to  be  put  in  the 
mouth  of  a  British  soldier,  should  beware  of  spir- 
itual pride  to-day.  We  have  passed  through  our 
fever.  But  when  we  think  of  that  great  Kipling 
boom,  our  proper  attitude  to  the  Prussian  is 
**  There,  but  for  the  exceeding  grace  of  God,  goes 
that  John  Bull  who  once  dipped  deep  into  his 
breeches  pocket  to  free  the  slave." 


VISCOUNT  CHAPLIN 

In  the  House  of  Commons  before  July,  1914,  two 
objects  impressed  the  discriminating  stranger  more 
vividly  even  than  the  Speaker's  mace  or  the  gods 
of  the  Treasury  Bench.  One  was  the  spreading 
sombrero  under  which  Mr.  John  Ward  sat,  like 
the  village  blacksmith  in  repose,  and  owed  not 
any  man.  The  other  was  the  broad-brimmed  silk 
hat  of  Mr.  Henry  Chaplin,  apparently  made  spe- 
cially for  him,  at  any  rate  unobtainable  through 
the  ordinary  channels  of  commerce.  There  is  no 
special  reason  why  a  large  expanse  of  soft  felt 
should  symbolise  rebellion,  or  a  stiff  cylinder  of 
shiny  material  should  stand  for  prescription.  It 
was,  in  fact,  the  former  style  which  was  mostly 
affected  by  the  old  Tory,  while  the  first  top-hats 
sat  on  the  heads  of  furious  revolutionaries. 

Still,  somehow  these  two  hats  seemed  to  stand 
for  attack  and  defence;  the  one  represented  the 
insurgent  slum;  the  other  the  grey  manor-house, 
with  its  trim  lawns,  riches  of  antique  elm  and 
beech,  old-oak  panelling,  Kneller  and  Gainsborough 
ancestors,  well-stored  cellars,  over-fed  horses,  and 
under-fed  labourers.  Both  belonged  to  men  en- 
tirely genuine   in  their  way,   and  not  incapable, 

186 


VISCOUNT  CHAPLIN  187 

despite  their  hostility,  of  a  certain  sympathy  with 
one  another.  If  the  aggressive  ^*  cow-puncher '' 
covered  a  genuine  man  of  the  people,  the  curling 
silk  adorned  a  not  less  true  representative  of 
the  English  classes.  At  the  trump  of  war  John 
Ward  threw  away  the  hat  for  a  khaki  cap,  which 
was  to  be  for  him  the  casque  of  a  very  perfect 
knight.  But  if  Henry  Chaplin  had  been  thirty 
years  younger,  and  who  knows  how  many  stones 
lighter,  he,  too,  would  have  sought  the  vasty  fields 
of  France  as  readily.  His  breed  have  always  been 
a  thought  too  ready  to  live  on  England.  But 
they  have  no  hesitation  in  dying  for  her  should 
occasion  arise. 

The  war  has  swept  away  the  two  hats,  like  much 
headgear  of  a  still  more  notable  kind.  The  one 
will  return;  the  other  has  gone  for  ever.  It  is 
a  solemn  thought  that  the  floor  of  the  House  of 
Commons  will  no  more  creak  beneath  the  tread  of 
Henry  Chaplin;  that  he  will  no  more  *^get  on  his 
legs'*  there,  or  ** venture  to  assert,  and  even  to 
asseverate,  that  the  right  honourable  gentleman 
would  have  been  acting  in  better  judgment  and  in 
a  better  spirit,  and  would  in  fact  have  been  better 
advised  if  he  had  consented,  and  agreed,  and  in  a 
manner  of  speaking  concurred,  in  a  suggestion  put 
forward  in  a  spirit  of  conciliation,  and  frankness, 
and  (if  he  might  say  so)  of  helpfulness  with  the 


188  ALL  AND  SUNDRY 

sole  purpose  of  making  this  measure  more  accept- 
able to  the  people,  not  one  class  or  section  or 
group  or  clique  or  anything  with  a  round  turn 
to  it,  but,  Mr.  Speaker,  the  people  throughout 
the  length  and  breadth  of  the  land/'  There  must 
be  an  end  to  all  things,  and  to  Mr.  Chaplin  as 
well  as  Mr.  Chaplin's  sentences.  But  it  must 
have  been  a  dull  soul  which  did  not  feel,  as  one 
of  the  minor  tragedies  of  war-time,  the  elevation 
to  the  Peerage  of  this  ornament  of  the  Commons. 
Viscount  Chaplin  is  not  so  pure  a  joy  as  was  Mr. 
Henry  Chaplin,  M.P.  Anybody  can  be  a  Viscount, 
given  a  certain  degree  of  wealth  and  no  previous 
convictions.  But  as  much  time  goes  to  the  breed- 
ing of  the  perfect  squire  as  to  the  smoothness  of 
the  perfect  lawn,  and  what  squire  so  perfect  as  the 
rejected  of  Sleaford  and  the  accepted  of  Wimble- 
don? Nor  was  this  the  only  element  of  pathos 
in  the  transaction.  For  the  conferment  of  the 
honour  was  in  essence  a  decisive  gesture  of  fare- 
well; it  was  the  good-night  of  the  tired  nurse,  who 
says,  **Now,  my  dear,  you  have  had  a  nice  long 
day;  go  to  bed  like  a  good  boy,  and  IVe  got  such 
a  nice  sugar-plum  for  you."  As  in  so  many 
cases.  Viscount  Chaplin's  coronet  was  intended  as 
a  night-cap;  but  those  who  adjusted  it  probably 
did  not  see  that  it  was  also  the  culminatng  irony 
of  a  career  singularly  ironical. 


VISCOUNT  CHAPLIN  189 

For  Viscount  Chaplin  is  rather  like  the  boy  who, 
after  looking  forward  to  Christmas  for  months, 
spends  the  day  of  feasting  in  bed  on  a  diet  of 
milk  and  lime-water.  His  party  had  been  *^ouf 
for  nine  years;  and  now  his  party  was  half  in, 
with  another  fraction  to  follow.  But  Mr.  Chaplin's 
appealing  monocle  caught  no  responsive  glance 
from  the  party  managers.  Time  was  when  he  had 
only  to  *^  drive  through  Arlington  Street  without 
calling*'  to  get  some  official  crumbs  from  the  rich 
Cecilian  table.  But  a  new  Pharaoh  had  arisen, 
who  knew  not  Joseph,  or  mayhap  knew  him  too 
well.  And  the  unkindest  cut  of  all  was  that  be- 
tween the  new  Pharaoh  and  the  dreamer  of  dreams 
there  existed  a  doctrinal  link  absent  in  the  case 
of  his  predecessor.  Lord  Salisbury  employed  the 
heretic;  Mr.  Bonar  Law  found  the  true  believer 
superfluous.  Bitterness  is  alien  from  Viscount 
Chaplin's  nature;  even  his  dislodgment  in  1906 
could  not  dim  the  kindly  twinkle  of  his  humorous 
eye  or  narrow  the  smile  which  makes  his  manly 
features  so  attractive.  But  he  would  be  hardly 
human  if  he  did  not  feel  like  those  old  Royalists 
who,  wearing  an  eye-patch  for  Edgehill  and  an 
armless  sleeve  for  Naseby,  found  Charles  II. 's 
council  chamber  full  of  dexterous  hypocrites  who 
had  served  the  usurper. 

For  the  greater  part  of  his  career  Mr.  Chaplin 


190  ALL  AND  SUNDRY 

played  the  role  of  an  amiable  Protectionist  Penda. 
He  was  the  one  confessed  pagan  in  a  nominally 
Christianised  land.  A  certain  awe  attached  to 
him  during  the  last  thirty  years  of  the  nineteenth 
century  as  the  almost  solitary  devotee  of  ^^Fair 
Trade."  This  man,  felt  the  young  Conservative, 
had  seen  things  strange  and  fearful.  He  had  held 
familiar  converse  with  the  high-priest  of  pre-Man- 
chester  heathenism.  The  dread  secrets  of  the  now 
deserted  groves  had  no  mysteries  for  him;  his 
nostrils  had  been  assailed  by  the  grateful  smoke 
of  human  sacrifice;  and  for  him  at  least  the  old 
gods  were  not  dead,  but  only  in  exile  like  Heine's. 
It  must  have  been  pure  luxury  to  Mr.  Chaplin  to 
enjoy  this  semi-fearful  admiration  of  men  half 
inclined  to  regret  the  old  worship,  but  not  bold 
enough  to  hint  at  restoring  it.  Even  more  grate- 
ful would  be  the  suspicions  of  the  orthodox;  noth- 
ing is  more  pleasant  than  an  unmerited  reputa- 
tion as  a  dangerous  fellow.  Mr.  Chaplin  could 
not  become  Chancellor  of  the  Duchy  without 
alarmed  deductions  of  a  plot  against  Free  Trade. 
Economic  heresy  was  scented  in  every  question 
he  put  to  a  witness  on  a  Royal  Commission  on 
Horse-breeding.  His  Bimetallic  views  caused  a 
shiver  in  the  City  of  London,  and  when  he  became 
the  first  President  of  the  Board  of  Agriculture 
it  was  felt  that  the  hungry  forties  were  well  on 


VISCOUNT  CHAPLIN  191 

their  way  back.  In  short,  Mr.  Chaplin  was  re- 
garded as  a  dangerous  man,  a  sort  of  economic 
Guy  Fawkes,  ready  for  any  desperate  emprise 
against  the  foundations  of  all  prosperity.  He 
was,  of  course,  perfectly  harmless.  For,  besides 
that  his  general  disposition  was  by  no  means 
disposed  to  martyrdom,  his  very  antagonism  to 
Free  Trade  was  really  a  bulwark  to  that  system. 
For  when  Mr.  Chaplin  **went  so  far  as  to  venture 
to"  assert  a  doctrine,  or  **was  for  his  own  part 
not  ashamed  to  confess  that  he  was  not  altogether 
satisfied,"  the  tendency  of  the  unthinking  was 
to  smile  or  yawn,  according  to  their  mood.  It 
seemed  impossible  that  so  ponderous  a  pursuer 
of  truth  should  ever  get  to  the  bottom  of  her 
well — still  more  inconceivable  that  he  should  return 
with  a  full  bucket. 

Then  of  a  sudden  all  was  changed,  and  the 
lonely  heretic  found  himself  one  of  a  mob  of  true 
believers.  It  might  have  been  thought  that,  in 
such  circumstances,  while  Birmingham  had  claims 
to  be  considered  the  Mecca  of  the  Tariff  Reformer, 
Sleaford  should  at  least  be  numbered  among  the 
holy  places.  But  Mr.  Chaplin  had  the  mortifica- 
tion of  finding  himself  more  obsolete  in  the  new 
scheme  of  things  than  he  had  been  in  the  old.  It 
was  as  if  Thor  had  been  revived  to  see  the  twen- 
tieth-century   resurgence    of    Teutonic    paganism, 


192  ALL  AND  SUNDRY 

only  to  find  he  had  as  little  in  common  with 
Krupps  as  with  the  Crusaders.  For  there  was 
really  a  whole  world  of  difference  between  Mr. 
Chaplin  and  the  neo-Protectionists.  He  talked 
through  a  very  English  hat;  they  mainly  through 
rather  un-English  throats  and  noses.  His  ideal 
was  to  make  England  more  squirishly  English; 
their  aim  was  to  make  England  rather  like  America, 
with  a  dash  of  Prussia  on  the  ** social  reform" 
side.  Lord  George  Bentinck  was  the  last  standard- 
bearer  of  the  old  cause.  Mr.  Andrew  Bonar  Law, 
Scotch-Canadian  business  man,  without  an  acre 
of  English  land  or  a  savour  of  English  sentiment, 
very  faithfully  represented  the  methods  and  ideals 
of  the  new  school. 

It  says  much  for  the  stoutness  of  Viscount 
Chaplin's  heart,  and  something  for  his  healthy 
insensitiveness,  that  he  continued  to  linger  super- 
fluous on  the  stage  where  he  was  denied  a  role 
he  must  have  thought  appropriate  to  his  merits. 
Any  man  less  English  would  have  retired  long 
ago,  to  write  the  epic  of  Hermit's  Derby  and 
memories  of  the  days  when  the  House  of  Commons 
was  really  a  first-class  club.  But  Mr.  Chaplin 
was  in  nothing  more  English  than  in  his  passion 
for  a  sixth  act  and  an  encore;  he  could  not  see 
that  the  real  curtain  of  his  drama  came  in  1906, 
when  Sleaford  forswore  its  thirty  years'  allegiance. 


VISCOUNT  CHAPLIN  193 

We  need  not  painfully  inquire  whether  he  could 
not  get  on  without  the  House  of  Commons,  or 
whether  he  perchance  imagined  that  England  and 
the  House  of  Commons  could  not  get  on  without 
him.  Probably  it  was  a  little  of  both;  it  is  certain 
that  this  entirely  amiable  man  is  sometimes  the 
victim  of  strong  illusion.  Undeniably  he  has 
always  believed  in  his  own  statesmanship;  equally 
sure  is  it  that  he  was  sincere  when  he  declared 
that  old-age  pensions  would  sap  the  sturdy  inde- 
pendence of  the  British  working  classes.  Others 
could  see  the  incongruity  of  such  sentiments  in 
the  mouth  of  one  who  has  eaten  much  public 
wages  for  a  quite  measurable  amount  of  public 
service.  But  Viscount  Chaplin  was  never  less 
conscious  of  being  a  humbug  than  when  he  (who 
had  got  through  much  private  money  and  was 
enjoying  an  ungrudged  pension)  sermonised  on 
the  insouciance  likely  to  be  induced  in  a  young 
hedger  and  ditcher  by  the  prospect  of  five  shillings 
a  week  at  seventy  years  of  age. 

**Very  odd  and  curious,"  said  Mr.  Harold  Skim- 
pole  to  the  person  who  had  ^* taken''  him,  ^Hhe 
mental  process  in  you  men  of  business.''  The 
squire  mind,  with  its  fine  enthusiasm  for  thrift 
in  the  cottage,  and  its  kindly  eagerness  to  repair 
out  of  public  funds  the  ravages  of  extravagance 
in  the  hall,  is  perhaps  equally  worthy  of  study. 


SIE  AKTHUE  CONAN  DOYLE 

As  a  literary  man,  Sir  Arthur  Conan  Doyle  may 
be  likened  to  a  plain  squire  wlio  sits  at  the  table 
of  princes.  He  is  not  of  their  rank,  but  he  is 
of  their  circle  and  atmosphere.  It  seems  absurd 
to  class  a  humble  craftsman  with  Shakespeare, 
Scott,  Dickens,  and  Thackeray,  but  theirs  is  truly 
his  company.  Unlike  them,  he  has  made  no  great 
literature.  But  he  is  like  them  in  having  created 
a  character  everybody  knows,  a  character  to  be 
quoted  with  the  same  confidence  that  one  mentions 
Falstaff  or  Pecksniff  or  Major  Pendennis. 

True,  Sir  Arthur  has  only  one  such  child  to 
his  credit,  while  others  have  begotten  sons  and 
daughters  on  the  patriarchal  scale.  But  it  is  a 
great  feat.  How  great  one  simple  test  will  show. 
Where  else  are  we  to  look  for  a  character  as 
distinct,  as  well  known,  and  as  universally  recog- 
nisable as  Sherlock  Holmes  I  Of  all  the  extremely 
intelligent  men  who  have  produced  fiction  during 
the  last  thirty  years — and  the  average  of  writing 
was  never  so  high — only  two,  so  far  as  I  can  recall, 
pass  the  test  of  quotation  in  almost  any  company. 
One  is  Eobert  Louis  Stevenson;  the  other  is  the 
inventor  of  Sherlock  Holmes.     Examine  the  files 

194 


SIR  ARTHUR  CONAN  DOYLE  195 

of  a  popular  newspaper  for  a  week,  and  you  are 
pretty  sure  to  find  one  reference  to  Jekyll  and 
Hyde  and  two  or  three  to  the  Conan  Doyle  hero. 
But,  while  few  people  who  talk  about  Jekyll  and 
Hyde  have  ever  read  the  story,  and  still  fewer 
understand  its  real  moral,  the  man  who  does  not 
know  everything  concerning  Sherlock  Holmes,  the 
cut  of  his  face,  the  shabbiness  of  his  dressing- 
gown,  his  indoor  pistol  practice,  the  tobacco  that 
he  smoked,  the  cocaine  that  he  injected,  the  plots 
that  he  laid  and  unravelled,  the  kings  that  he 
patronised — that  man  is  indeed  a  rarity.  Say 
that  somebody  reminds  you  of  Sir  Willoughby 
Patterne,  and  the  chances  are  you  will  get  either 
a  blank  look  or  the  smile  of  embarrassed  hypoc- 
risy. Mention  even  Tono-Bungay,  and  it  is  an 
accident  you  are  understood.  But  a  newspaper 
read  by  two  million  indifferently  educated  people 
can  be  quite  sure  of  comprehension  when  it  prints 
the  familiar  headline,  *^  Sherlock  Holmes  in  Real 
Life.'' 

It  is,  surely,  a  considerable  satire  on  the  modem 
school  of  fiction,  that  priding  itself  above  all  on 
its  touch  with  reality,  it  has  not  succeeded  in 
making  a  character  real  enough  for  a  policeman  to 
swear  to.  But  the  explanation  is  simple.  Analysis 
is  the  aim  of  the  novelist,  and  analysis,  while 
yielding  a  multitude  of  facts,  obscures  and  even 


196  ALL  AND  SUNDKY 

destroys  the  truth.  There  is  a  quite  considerable 
difference,  for  example,  between  an  Irish  poet  and 
a  Jewish  banker.  But  it  would  take  a  clever  man 
to  distinguish  one  from  the  other  after  a  pro- 
fessor of  anatomy  had  quite  done  with  them.  He 
might,  indeed,  have  found  a  multitude  of  facts 
unknown  to  ^^ Who's  Who''  or  the  ** Directory  of 
Directors."  He  might  even  have  discovered  the 
true  physical  source  of  versification  in  the  one  and 
of  money-making  in  the  other.  But  he  could  not 
justly  point  to  the  results  of  his  activity  with  the 
remark;  ^*How  lifelike  is  this  poet!"  or  ^*Here 
you  have  the  breathing  embodiment  of  Lombard 
Street!"  We  distinguish  things  by  their  shape 
and  colour.  Analysis  shows  that  colour  is  an 
illusion,  and  can  only  proceed  by  making  shape 
shapeless. 

Sherlock  Holmes  succeeds,  not  by  his  subtlety, 
but  by  his  simplicity,  and  even  more  by  the  sim- 
plicity of  the  famous  Dr.  Watson.  If  there  were 
the  smallest  ground  for  suspecting  the  sincerity 
of  ^*my  dear  Watson,"  the  whole  thing  would 
topple  to  the  ground.  It  often  hovers  on  the  very 
verge  of  anti-climax.  For  Holmes  is,  after  all, 
no  giant.  Poe  and  several  Frenchmen  have  done 
better  in  this  kind,  and  so  far  as  Holmes  himself 
is  concerned  Sir  Arthur  Conan  Doyle  owes,  per- 
haps, as  much  to  them  as  to  the  Edinburgh  pro- 


SIE  AETHUR  CONAN  DOYLE  197 

fessor  whose  fancy  for  identifying  the  trades  of 
patients  by  their  small  peculiarities  gave  him  one 
set  of  ideas  most  skilfully  used.  Sir  Arthur's 
true  triumph  is  the  humble  Watson.  Not  great 
himself,  he  is  the  cause  of  greatness  in  another. 
Faith  breeds  faith.  Worship  is  catching.  **My 
conviction  gains  infinitely/'  says  the  sage,  *Hhe 
moment  another  soul  will  believe  in  it.*'  Seeing 
Watson  constantly  on  his  knees,  we  all  fall  on 
ours,  by  mere  force  of  suggestion. 

A  good  many  of  the  old  painters  were  fond  of 
putting  themselves  somewhere  in  their  pictures. 
They  are  generally  to  be  recognised  by  a  peculiar 
stiffness:  the  artist  painted  himself  by  a  looking- 
glass.  One  cannot  avoid  the  conviction  that  some 
such  process  obtained  in  the  Sherlock  Holmes 
business,  and  that  Dr.  Watson  is  really  the  coun- 
terfeit presentment  of  his  creator.  At  any  rate, 
it  is  certain  that  Dr.  Watson  is  a  very  English 
Englishman,  and  that  Sir  Arthur  Conan  Doyle, 
though  born  and  educated  in  Edinburgh,  and  of 
Irish  blood,  is  another.  There  is,  too,  a  great 
deal  of  incidental  Watsonism  in  him.  It  can  be 
seen  in  his  ever-fresh  interest  in  facts,  relevant 
and  otherwise.  Possibly  it  is  also  visible  in  his 
deductions  from  facts.  Watson  noticed  things, 
but  had  a  trick  of  laying  emphasis  in  the  wrong 
place,  and  getting  up  all  kinds  of  blind  alleys  in 


198  ALL  AND  SUNDRY 

his  pursuit  of  non-existent  clues.  Watson's  creator, 
since  he  abandoned  the  gracious  role  of  enter- 
tainer, seems  not  wholly  free  from  similar  ten- 
dencies. 

It  is  the  fashion  for  novelists,  as  soon  as  they 
can  afford  it,  to  become  preachers;  the  profes- 
sional preachers  retaliating  in  kind  to  the  best 
of  their  ability.  Whether  this  Hamlet-Laertes  ex- 
change of  weapons  really  helps  either  literature  or 
society  need  not  be  discussed.  But  the  strength 
of  the  tradition  could  not  be  better  illustrated 
than  in  the  case  of  Sir  Arthur  Conan  Doyle.  One 
would  think  him  the  last  to  be  beguiled  out  of  his 
true  vocation.  A  fine  craftsman  in  his  own  line, 
he  is,  perhaps,  worse  fitted  than  most  men  of 
equal  intelligence  for  the  task  of  the  historian  or 
the  social  critic.  It  is  not  easy  to  describe  shortly 
the  disability  from  which  he  suffers,  but  one  might, 
perhaps,  best  express  it  by  calling  him  a  lati- 
tudinarian  bigot.  He  is  at  once  very  broad  and 
very  prejudiced,  very  illiberally  liberal,  very  dog- 
matically hostile  to  dogma. 

Take,  for  example,  the  business  of  divorce.  Sir 
Arthur  is  for  making  divorce  cheap  and  easy — 
how  cheap  and  how  easy  I  hesitate  to  say,  for 
fear  of  misrepresentation.  He  may  be  right,  or 
he  may  be  wrong,  on  the  main  question.  But 
can  he  possibly  be  right  in  dismissing  as  mere 


SIR  ARTHUR  CONAN  DOYLE  199 

antiquated  prejudice  the  objections  of  millions  of 
earnest,  intelligent,  disinterested,  and  upright  men 
and  women?  Then  there  is  his  enthusiasm  for 
spiritualism.  Here,  again.  Sir  Arthur  is  quite 
entitled  to  his  opinion,  and  has  a  right  to  state 
it.  But  how  can  he  blame  the  Wesleyans  of  Not- 
tingham (as  he  did  with  great  severity  on  one 
occasion)  for  not  allowing  him  to  lecture  in  their 
hain  No  doubt  there  are,  in  the  immortal  words 
of  the  Grand  Inquisitor,  **Wesleyan  Methodists 
of  the  most  persecuting  and  bigoted  description.'' 
But  was  this  particular  act  bigoted?  Is  it  bigoted 
for  a  Mohammedan  to  object  to  his  mosque  being 
used  for  an  exposure  of  the  imposture  of  Islam? 
Is  it  not  rather  bigoted  to  say,  as  Sir  Conan 
Doyle  does,  that  spiritualism  gives  the  afflicted  **a 
satisfaction  which  no  creed-bound  religion  could 
supply"?  How  possibly  can  Sir  Arthur  know? 
He  cannot  speak  with  authority  concerning  the 
spiritual  experiences  of  hundreds  of  ipillions  of 
the  quick  and  of  the  great  host  of  the  dead.  It 
is  quite  open  to  him,  as  a  free  man,  to  believe 
that  the  dogmas  of  Christianity  ** matter  little," 
and  have  added  **  needlessly  to  the  contentions  of 
the  world."  But  why,  in  that  case,  be  at  pains 
to  reconcile  hatred  of  our  enemies  with  Chris- 
tianity? Why  be  so  distressed  over  the  ex-Kaiser 
making   **the   whole    conception   of   religion   gro- 


200  ALL  AND  SUNDRY 

tesque,*'  when  you  yourself  deprecate  **all  the 
haggling  claims  and  the  mythical  doctrines  which 
have  grown  up  round  the  name  of  Chrisf  ?  Why 
complain  that  the  Germans  in  their  warfare 
**  brought  the  world  of  Christ  back  to  the  days  of 
Odin''? 

It  is  our  good  Dr.  Watson  again,  wavering  be- 
tween the  curing  of  patients  and  the  tracking  of 
criminals.  We  know  his  quality  as  a  detective; 
we  can  only  infer  how  the  patients  got  on.  The 
same  English  desire  to  have  it  all  ways  is  apparent 
in  Dr.  Watson's  maker.  He  wants  to  have  the 
best  of  all  possible  and  impossible  worlds,  to  be 
at  ease  both  in  Zion  and  Valhalla,  as  well  as  in 
a  scientific  lecture  room.  It  is  all  very  human 
and  natural.  The  majority  of  us  are  made  that 
way,  and  to  a  story-teller  it  is  no  disadvantage 
to  feel  sympathy  with  very  different  and  incon- 
sistent things.  The  teacher,  however,  must  be 
a  little  ^* dogmatic."  He  must  be  quite  sure  that 
two  and  two  make  four,  and  maintain  that  they 
never  can  make  sixteen,  even  at  the  risk  of  *^  add- 
ing to  the  contentions"  of  the  schoolroom. 

But  why  be  a  teacher,  anyway,  when  you  can 
afford  not  to,  and  have  no  compelling  vocation 
that  way?  It  is  a  dull  business  for  one  who  has 
had  the  world  at  his  feet  as  a  creator. 


MR.  ROBERT  SMILLIE 

Of  all  the  leaders  of  Labour  Mr.  Robert  Smillie, 
President  of  the  Miners'  Federation,  is  the  most 
interesting.  He  has  also  been  described  as  the 
least  understood — partly,  no  doubt,  because  he  says 
little  and  says  it  very  plainly.  Other  Labour 
leaders  are  comprehensible,  because  they  are  copi- 
ously cloudy.  But  this  Scottish  miner,  with  his 
taciturnity  and  consistency,  is  mysterious  and  sin- 
ister. He  has  been  known  to  do  things;  it  is  felt, 
tremendously,  that  he  might  begin  to  do  things 
on  a  very  large  scale.  When  Mr.  Ramsay  Mac- 
donald  spoke  of  revolution  people  yawned;  they 
took  no  more  notice  of  it  than  the  republicanism 
of  a  young  Duke;  the  assured  position  of  Mr. 
Macdonald  in  the  middle  class  seemed  so  incom- 
patible with  bloodthirstiness.  But  of  Mr.  Robert 
Smillie  all  things  are  considered  possible.  He 
may  develop  into  an  English  Lenin.  He  may 
become  Prime  Minister  in  a  Labour  Government. 
He  may  set  up  a  steam  guillotine  in  Piccadilly 
Circus,  or  even  stop  fox-hunting.  He  may — ^but 
the  possibilities  of  Mr.  Smillie  are  quite  disquiet- 
ingly  indefinite. 
That,  at  least,  was  a  common  view  of  Mr.  Smillie 

201 


202  ALL  AND  SUNDEY 

before  he  undertook  the  cross-examination  of  Lord 
Durham  and  the  Duke  of  Northumberland  before 
the  Coal  Commission.  Since  then  there  has  been, 
possibly,  a  slight  revulsion  in  Mr.  Smillie's  favour. 
For  in  that  contest  Mr.  Smillie  came  off  decidedly- 
second-best;  he  even  appeared  not  a  little  ridicu- 
lous; and  it  is  a  common  mistake  to  think  of  a 
man  who  is  ridiculous  as  a  man  who  is  harmless. 
It  was,  however,  only  the  weaker  side  of  the  miners ' 
Napoleon  that  was  engaged  in  this  affair.  Like 
many  Scots,  he  unites  a  temperamental  coldness 
with  an  intellectual  emotionalism,  so  that  he  chases 
will-o'-the-wisps  with  the  patience  and  method  of 
the  deer-stalker.  His  theories  are  wild,  but  his 
practice  is  essentially  businesslike.  Li  dealing 
with  first  principles  he  does  not  altogether  lose 
the  controversial  skill  which,  no  less  than  his 
amazing  grip  of  facts,  astonishes  those  who  have 
seen  him  handle  concrete  questions  of  work,  wages, 
and  labour  conditions.  But  it  is  rather  the  skill 
of  those  masters  of  mad  logic  who  bewilder  us 
in  ** Through  the  Looking  Glass."  One  feels  that 
he  would  get  on  very  well  as  consort  of  the  Red 
Queen.     , 

It  is  on  the  practical  side  that  Mr.  Smillie  is 
really  formidable.  As  a  leader  of  men,  he  seeks 
his  fellow  in  the  trade  union  world.  Nothing, 
indeed,    could   be   in    sharper   contrast    than   his 


MR.  ROBERT  SMILLIE  203 

failure  as  a  talker  and  his  success  as  an  organiser. 
He  has  been  beaten  in  seven  or  eight  Parliamentary 
elections;  even  the  miners  of  his  own  Mid-Lanark 
have  rejected  him.  Part  of  his  want  of  success 
has,  of  course,  been  due  to  his  refusal  to  com- 
promise with  the  ** capitalism''  that  calls  itself 
Radical.  But  there  are  other  reasons.  He  is  not 
a  good  candidate  from  any  point  of  view;  his 
autocratic  temper  stands  in  his  way;  he  has  no 
way  with  him;  he  loses  his  temper  and  sometimes 
his  head  on  the  platform;  his  grim  face  seldom 
lights  with  a  smile;  his  speech,  though  clear  and 
strong,  fails  to  charm.  The  secret  of  his  influence 
must  be  sought  in  other  qualities.  He  is  not 
** popular,"  even  with  the  miners.  But  he  has 
their  obedience  because  they  know  he  is  fit  to 
command  it.  For  he  is  not  only  complete  master 
of  all  the  details  of  trade  union  organisation  and 
of  a  very  complicated  trade,  but  strong,  capable, 
and  in  his  way  wholly  honest.  He  understands 
negotiation;  he  knows  the  necessity  of  keeping  to 
his  word,  once  it  is  passed;  above  all,  he  is  dis- 
interested. To  money  apparently  he  is  entirely 
indifferent;  if  he  has  an  axe  to  grind  it  is  not 
an  axe  of  the  common  kind.  There  are  some 
who  credit  him  with  great  ambitions,  but  they 
are  not  vulgar  ambitions.     For  his  own  part  he 


204  ALL  AND  SUNDRY 

lets  no  hint  fall  of  such  things;  Scotland  does  not 
give  itself  away. 

Harsh  conditions  acting  on  excellent  natural 
abilities  have  produced  this  complex  personality. 
Mr.  Smillie's  case  was  much  that  of  his  friend 
Keir  Hardie.  He  had  the  very  minimum  of  school- 
ing. The  moment  the  primary  school  had  finished 
pumping  into  him  the  regulation  educational  **  mix- 
ture as  before'*  he  became  a  rivetter's  boy  at 
Govan.  Disliking  that  trade,  he  drifted  into  min- 
ing, and  for  many  years  worked  underground. 
His  home  was,  and  still  is,  at  Larkhall,  a  dismal 
town  in  the  scarred  and  blasted  mining  area  of 
Mid-Lanark,  where  everything  conspires  to  make 
life  hideous  and  depressing.  The  naturally  rather 
gloomy  nature  of  Robert  Smillie  took  on  in  such 
surroundings  a  deeper  tinge  of  pessimism.  Forty, 
even  twenty,  years  before  he  would  probably  have 
sought  relief  in  the  chapel  or  the  public-house. 
But  the  changes  in  manners  and  the  decline  in 
theological  temperature  have  not  left  the  working 
classes  unaffected.  Gospel  hot  and  whisky  cold 
are  still  the  means  chosen  by  some  to  counteract 
the  numbness  that  comes  of  monotonous  toil  and 
all-enveloping  ugliness.  But  there  has  also  arisen 
a  new  type  which  cares  for  neither  of  these  things, 
which  tends  to  asceticism  in  practice  and  hedonism 
in  theory,  and,  while  expecting  nothing  in  the  next 


MR.  ROBERT  SMILLIE  205 

world,  claims  much  in  this.  The  aristocracy  of 
Labour  is  now,  generally  speaking,  as  pagan  as 
most  aristocracies;  but  it  has  not  lost  its  capacity 
for  fanaticism.  Its  interest  in  a  heavenly  kingdom 
has  only  been  transferred  to  the  social  republic; 
and  in  place  of  fuddling  on  beer  it  intoxicates  itself 
with  statistics.  Mr.  Smillie  is  a  fanatic  of  this 
type,  and  not  the  less  dangerous  because  in  him 
fanaticism  is  a  cold  passion.  He  is  ready  to  cavil 
on  the  ninth  part  of  a  farthing  in  matters  of 
wages,  and  to  do  battle  for  better  housing,  baths, 
and  the  like.  But  his  ultimate  aim  has  nothing 
in  common  with  that  of  the  ordinary  trade  union 
leader.  He  wants  nothing  less  than  a  reconstruc- 
tion of  society;  his  methods  would  not  be  Lenin's, 
but,  like  Lenin,  he  desires  the  complete  dethrone- 
ment of  ** capital' '  and  *' privilege.*'  He  repre- 
sents Scottish  logic  as  against  English  compro- 
mise, and  is  a  reminder  that  in  many  ways 
Scotland  is  nearer  to  the  Continent  than  to  her 
Southern  neighbour. 

For  at  bottom  the  Socialism  of  Mr.  Smillie  is  a 
very  different  thing  from  the  variety  current  this 
side  of  Tweed.  There  would  be  nothing  fatuous 
or  ineffective  about  it.  It  would  work  harshly, 
tyrannically,  unjustly;  but  it  would  work.  The 
Right  Honourable  Robert  Smillie  who  might  have 
been   (had  this  country  possessed  any   tolerable 


206  ALL  AND  SUNDRY 

system  of  discovering  and  training  for  its  higher 
purposes  all  the  talent  born  in  it)  would  have 
doubtless  shown  great  talents  for  administration; 
and  the  Citizen  Eobert  Smillie  who  may  possibly 
be  would  make  the  wheels  of  his  iron  world  revolve 
in  earnest.  It  is  too  late,  no  doubt,  for  society 
to  secure  the  lost  ally;  and  if  it  is  to  make  Citizen 
Smillie  impossible  it  must  do  more  than  rail  at 
him.  It  should  study  with  care  certain  words  of 
his.  **I  have  been  one  of  seven  persons,''  he 
said  on  one  occasion,  *'who  have  had  to  wash 
in  a  small  kitchen,  one  little  tub  serving  all  of 
us  as  our  only  bath,  and  a  change  of  water  taking 
place  only  when  the  water  would  no  longer  serve 
its  purpose  of  removing  dirt."  Now,  this  bestial 
state  of  affairs  cannot  be  wholly  set  to  the  charge 
of  ''capitalism'';  there  are  poorer  and  less  organ- 
ised workers  who  do  not  tolerate  such  conditions. 
If  the  Japanese  coolie  can  get  his  daily  hot  bath, 
the  British  miner,  with  his  high  wages,  need  not 
lack,  somehow  or  other,  the  minimum  of  decency. 
But  one  thing  is  certain.  It  may  not  be  specially 
dangerous  to  allow  stupid  men  to  live  in  stupid 
dirt;  it  may  be  even  dangerous  to  deprive  them 
of  their  dirt  by  force,  but  to  allow  the  clever 
and  ambitious  to  grow  up  to  manhood  in  such 
conditions  is  madness.  Every  vivid  nature  that 
grows    up    warped    and    embittered    by    Robert 


MR.  ROBERT  SMILLIE  207 

Smillie's  experiences  is  a  social  danger,  and  more 
dangerous,  perhaps,  if  he  becomes  an  honest  man 
than  he  would  be  if  he  joined  the  ranks  of  scoun- 
drelism.  It  is  easy  to  understand  a  lack  of  passion 
for  social  justice.  It  is  less  easy  to  understand 
the  carelessness  of  the  comfortable  classes  con- 
cerning social  security.  One  would  think  that  the 
mere  instinct  of  self-preservation  would  lead  to 
the  construction  of  some  educational  net  which 
would  make  sure  that  youths  of  brains  and  char- 
acter are  not  permanently  ranged  against  the 
existing  order  by  the  bitter  contrast  between  their 
potentialities  of  mind  and  soul  and  the  degrada- 
tion of  their  physical  life. 


ME.  J.  R.  CLYNES  AND  SOME  OTHERS 

It  is  not  easy  to  arrive  at  a  quite  just  view  of 
the  working  man  in  office.  In  the  arts  and  sciences 
we  have,  or  should  have,  an  absolute  standard. 
A  mathematical  proposition  is  either  true  or  un- 
true; nobody  is  stupid  enough  to  say  that  it  is 
unworthy  of  a  peer,  or  creditable  for  a  bricklayer. 
When  the  popular  publisher  announces  the  dis- 
covery of  a  real  navvy  poet,  sensible  men  make 
no  allowance  for  the  possible  difficulties  of  com- 
posing triolets  in  corduroys,  or  thinking  out  an 
epic  while  balancing  a  wheelbarrow  on  a  six-inch 
plank.  They  do  not  care  in  the  least  whether 
the  versifier  was  a  navvy,  but  only  whether  he 
is  a  poet.  In  the  case  of  a  painter  we  may  read 
with  a  certain  languid  interest  that  he  was 
caressed  by  kings,  or  that  he  failed  to  please  the 
beer-seller  for  whom  he  painted  a  sign.  But 
these  matters  are  quite  extraneous;  we  do  not 
say  that  he  was  a  good  colourist,  considering 
that  he  was  bom  in  the  workhouse,  or  that  a 
public-schoolboy  should  have  been  stronger  in  per- 
spective. 

In  politics   the   case  is   different.     One  cannot 
always  judge  by  results,  since  results  are  often 


MR.  J.  R.  CLYNES  A:ND  OTHERS      209 

not  visible  at  all,  and  still  more  frequently  the 
ostensible  result  is  of  very  small  importance  com- 
pared with  the  real  one.  For  example,  the  mere 
presence  of  Mr.  Barnes  in  a  War  Cabinet  would 
have  been  invaluable,  even  if  Mr.  Barnes,  like  the 
late  Duke  of  Devonshire,  had  contributed  to  the 
discussions  little  more  articulate  than  a  series  of 
powerful  yawns.  The  politician  is  valued  for  what 
he  is  supposed  to  represent,  as  well  as  for  what 
he  is.  Mr.  J.  R.  Clynes  was  more  valuable  at  the 
Food  Control  as  a  trade  union  nominee  than  he 
would  have  been  as  the  owner  of  half  an  English 
county.  On  the  other  hand,  it  is  obvious  that 
social  position  or  its  equivalent  has  a  good  deal 
more  to  do  with  routine  success  in  politics  than 
with  success  in  an  ordinary  career.  Mr.  Wellbore- 
Wellbore  will  always  have  a  pull,  if  only  because 
he  can  pay  for  his  seat,  is  safe  against  electoral 
accidents,  and  stands  for  one  constant  factor,  the 
rights  of  property.  A  dull  man  never  out  of 
touch  with  the  House  of  Conamons  has  an  advan- 
tage over  a  sharp  man  often  excluded  from  Parlia- 
ment and  only  very  exceptionally  in  office.  It  is 
not,  therefore,  fair  to  compare  the  Labour  mem- 
ber, who  of  all  politicians  works  under  the  gravest 
disadvantages,  but  who  also  has  certain  peculiar 
claims  in  a  time  of  national  crisis,  with  the  ordi- 
nary practitioner  at  Westminster.    We  must  judge 


210  ALL  AND  SUNDRY 

of  him  with  his  limitations  and  his  special  position 
constantly  in  view. 

When  all  allowances  are  made,  it  can  hardly 
be  said  that  Labour  Ministers  have  more  than 
justified  expectations.  They  have  done  neither 
very  badly  nor  conspicuously  well.  Their  chief  pos- 
itive quality  has  been  their  extreme  addiction  to 
red  tape.  Of  all  officials  they  have  been  the  most 
official,  the  least  liable  to  depart  from  routine, 
and  the  most  ready  to  postpone  decisions.  Mr. 
Clynes  is  perhaps  the  only  exception.  He  did 
show  great  ability,  and  much  strength  of  char- 
acter. How  much  of  Lord  Rhondda's  success  may 
be  justly  attributed  to  the  able  work  of  his  lieu- 
tenant, how  much,  on  the  other  hand,  Mr.  Clynes 
owed  as  principal  to  the  foundations  laid  by  his 
predecessor,  is  not  for  the  present  writer  to  de- 
termine. But  one  thing  may  be  said  with  fair 
certainty  of  Mr.  Clynes.  He  has,  in  a  greater 
degree  than  any  of  his  Labour  colleagues,  dis- 
played the  essential  qualities  of  statesmanship — 
courage,  balance,  vision,  and  a  capacity  for  non- 
committal co-operation  with  people  who  may  be 
the  opponents  of  to-morrow.  He,  at  least,  gives 
the  impression  of  having  worked  on  equal  terms 
with  his  chance  colleagues.  Other  Labour  Min- 
isters accepted  with  peculiar  meekness  a  special 
status  which  was  rather  brutally  exemplified  in 


ME.  J.  R.  CLYNES  AND  OTHERS      211 

the  Henderson  **doormaf  incident.  Even  Mr. 
Barnes,  who  is  naturally  a  dignified  as  well  as  a 
wholly  honest  man,  seems  to  have  regarded  his 
seat  in  the  War  Cabinet  as  emphatically  a  back 
seat,  and  to  have  been  content  to  look  on  himself 
rather  as  a  Labour  delegate  than  a  British  Min- 
ister. Mr.  John  Hodge,  common-sense  and  prac- 
tical, with  the  class  of  mind  which  in  other 
circumstances  might  have  made  him  head  of  a 
great  store,  was  yet  more  a  victim  of  **  atmos- 
phere"; it  is  quite  possible  that  he  regards  Mr. 
Law  as  in  some  mysterious  way  of  higher  social 
status  than  himself.  There  were  a  great  many 
good  people  who  were  afraid  that  Labour  Min- 
isters would  not  know  how  to  *^ behave.'*  As  a 
matter  of  fact,  they  have  ** behaved''  beautifully, 
but  just  a  little  like  the  stewards  of  a  village 
club  waiting  on  a  prosperous  sausage-manufacturer 
turned  squire. 

No  doubt  this  meekness  had  not  a  little  to 
do  with  the  disquiet  of  the  Labour  party  which 
culminated  in  the  decision  to  **call  out"  Labour 
leaders  from  the  last  Government.  Labour  is 
nervously  concerned  for  its  dignity,  and  eternally 
troubled  with  the  fear  that  its  representatives  may 
be  seduced  by  association  with  the  ** bourgeois." 
On  this  subject  it  is  possible  to  have  sympathy 
both  with  Labour  and  with  its  unfortunate  rep- 


212  ALL  AND  SUNDRY 

resentatives.  We  have  here  in  modem  guise  the 
very  old  problem  of  the  tribune  of  the  people. 
The  people  can  only  express  themselves  through 
individuals  in  whom  they  repose  confidence,  and 
whom  they  invest  with  their  power.  But  as  soon 
as  they  have  made  such  an  individual  important, 
he  becomes  worth  buying,  and  attempts,  generally 
successful  in  the  long  run,  are  made  to  buy  him. 
In  the  words  of  De  Lolme,  the  people  *' cannot 
show  preference  to  a  man,  but  they  thereby  attack 
his  virtue;  they  cannot  raise  him,  without  imme- 
diately losing  him  and  weakening  their  own  cause; 
nay,  they  inspire  him  with  views  directly  opposite 
to  their  own,  and  send  him  to  join  and  increase 
the  number  of  their  enemies. '*  The  demagogue 
who  goes  over  to  the  patricians  is  a  figure  of 
every  age,  and  is  by  no  means  unknown  to-day. 

Labour  has,  no  doubt,  good  reasons  to  be  on 
its  guard  against  this  danger.  Yet  an  attitude 
of  excessive  suspicion  may  actually  provoke  the 
evils  it  seeks  to  avoid.  On  the  whole  the  repre- 
sentatives of  the  British  working  classes  have 
so  far  shown  a  very  high  standard  of  political 
integrity.  The  brighter  spirits  among  them  could 
do  better  in  a  good  many  lines,  and  there  is  no 
labour  more  exacting,  and  no  servitude  more  re- 
pulsive, than  that  of  men  whose  masters  are 
counted  by   the   million.     Yet   the   ** ratting''   of 


MR.  J.  R.  CLYNES  AND  OTHERS      213 

a  Labour  member  is  a  very  rare  incident,  and 
though  the  Labour  vote  is  very  often  stupid,  it 
is  seldom  dishonest.  Obviously,  however,  con- 
ditions are  liable  to  change  if  Labour  becomes 
commonly  in  a  position  to  insist  on  a  large  repre- 
sentation in  the  Cabinet;  and  one  of  the  great 
problems  for  the  party  will  be  how  to  breed  a 
race  of  statesmen  at  once  able,  incorruptible,  and 
loyal  to  their  class. 

The  best  solution  would  probably  be  to  lighten 
the  stress  on  the  word  class,  and  be  content  with 
much  the  same  measure  of  control  which  is  asserted 
in  the  case  of  other  parties.  Let  us  suppose, 
for  example,  that  Labour  produces  a  really  great 
man.  There  is  no  manner  of  reason  why  it  should 
not  do  so.  The  wonder  is  rather  that  thus  far 
mediocrity  has  been  so  general  a  characteristic 
of  Labour  leaders.  Such  a  man  of  genius,  in 
present  circumstances,  would  be  inevitably  lost 
to  Labour  within  a  few  years.  He  would  bear, 
so  long  as  he  was  forced,  and  not  a  moment  longer, 
the  sneers  of  Conferences  concerning  his  salary, 
his  dinner-table  companions,  and  his  felonious  ad- 
diction to  a  good  cigar  and  an  occasional  bottle 
of  champagne.  He  would  stand,  only  so  long  as 
was  strictly  necessary  for  his  purpose,  inquisition 
as  to  his  wife's  hats  and  the  education  of  his 
children.     He  might  consent  to  be  ** called  out" 


214  ALL  AND  SUNDRY 

once  or  twice  by  his  Union;  meanwhile  he  would 
be  busy  with  plans  to  be  *^ called  in''  by  some 
more  permanent  employer.  It  is  easy  to  denounce 
such  a  man  as  a  selfish  adventurer.  In  exactly 
the  same  sense  all  the  great  statesmen  that  ever 
lived  were  intriguers  and  self-seekers.  For  the 
greater  the  man  the  more  open  he  is  to  such  temp- 
tation. Love  of  money  is  a  less  imperious  motive 
than  the  first-class  workman's  hunger  for  his 
true  work  and  desire  for  the  best  tools  to  do  it 
with;  and  that  instinct  is  confined  to  no  social 
class.  Labour  may  be  fairly  sure  of  its  repre- 
sentatives so  long  as  they  are  merely  representa- 
tive, and  of  no  importance  in  their  individual 
capacity.  There  is  no  object  in  seducing  a  man 
who  becomes  of  no  account  the  moment  he  is 
bought.  But  it  is  not  easy  to  see  how  Labour 
is  to  effect  much  politically  so  long  as  it  produces 
merely  third-rate  intellects,  and,  under  its  present 
constitution,  it  stands  to  lose  any  first-class  minds 
it  breeds.  Ambitious  and  supremely  clever  men 
simply  will  not  be  treated  as  mere  hinds. 

Labour  may  retort  that  these  matters  are  its 
sole  concern.  But  the  nation  has  a  right  to  de- 
mand that,  if  Labour  seeks  to  rule,  it  shall  at 
least  provide  itself  with  a  sufficient  equipment 
of  talent  and  technical  mastery.  At  present  it 
cannot  be  truly  said  that  the  average  intellectual 


MR.  J.  R.  CLYNES  AND  OTHERS      215 

standing  of  its  spokesmen  is  high.  Such  ability 
as  it  possesses  runs  unduly  to  talk.  It  is  true, 
of  course,  that  there  are  many  Labour  members 
whose  natural  parts  compare  quite  favourably  with 
those  of  the  usual  rich  Radical  and  the  ordinary 
run  of  county,  city,  and  suburban  Conservatives. 
But  one  looks  in  vain  for  any  commanding  figure, 
and  the  mediocrity  who  has  never  exercised  great 
authority  cannot  compare  with  the  mediocrity  who 
has  grown  old  in  the  atmosphere  of  public  business. 
It  is  of  the  highest  importance  that  Labour  should 
accumulate  experience  and  throw  up  talent.  No 
sensible  man  **fears*'  Labour  in  the  sense  of 
wishing  to  exclude  it  from  its  due  share  in  the 
government  of  this  country.  The  nation  has  need 
of  all  the  ability  and  honesty  it  can  command, 
and  it  is  to  the  last  degree  undesirable  that  a  very 
inclusive  electorate  should  go  with  a  very  exclusive 
cabinet.  What  really  is  to  be  feared  is  the  full 
development  of  the  voting  strength  of  Labour 
without  any  proportionate  advance  in  the  state- 
manship  of  its  leaders.  And  it  is  difficult  to 
discern  much  hope  of  increased  stature  while  the 
rank  and  file  of  Labour  continues  to  show  jealousy 
of  any  superiority  within  its  own  body.  The 
trouble  seems  to  be,  not  at  all  passion  for  dem- 
ocratic equality,  but  the  class  pettiness  which  per- 
vades  all   English   society   and  makes   the  clear- 


216  ALL  AND  SUNDRY 

starcher  more  contemptuous  of  the  ordinary  laun- 
dress tlian  a  Duke  is  of  a  tradesman.  It  is 
said  that  the  British  soldier  will  never  follow  an 
officer  of  his  own  class  as  he  will  an  indubitable 
'* gentleman'';  and  the  loyalty  of  the  trade  union- 
ist to  his  leader  seems  to  be  tempered  by  two 
feelings:  scorn  that  he  is  not  something  better, 
and  suspicion  that  he  is  trying  to  become  some- 
thing better.  One  trouble  of  a  Labour  Ministry 
at  present  would  be  that  it  could  not  command 
the  confidence  of  Labour.  For  Labour,  with  all 
its  talk  of  ** democracy,"  retains  the  distinguish- 
ing mark  of  a  servile  tradition:  it  is  not  strong 
enough  to  subject  itself  to  strong  leadership.  Only 
those  will  voluntarily  accept  a  master,  and  serve 
him  with  cheerful  and  constant  loyalty,  who  are 
very  sure  of  their  ultimate  capacity  to  get  rid 
of  him  if  he  proves  unsatisfactory. 


VISCOUNT  CAVE 

As  Mr.  George  Cave,  he  was  the  party  politician 
not  very  far  from  his  best.  He  is  a  gentleman,  for 
what  that  may  be  worth — and  it  is  worth  some- 
thing, if  not  quite  so  much  as  was  once  thought. 
He  is  a  lawyer  of  real  learning  and  great  pro- 
fessional achievement.  He  is  a  most  favourable 
specimen  of  orthodox  public  school  and  Univer- 
sity culture.  And  throughout  his  Parliamentary 
career  he  showed  himself,  as  politicians  go,  quite 
exceptionally  honest. 

Entering  the  House  of  Commons  rather  late  in 
life,  he  rapidly  acquired  a  reputation  as  one  of 
the  few  effective  speakers  in  the  quieter  vein  on 
the  Unionist  benches.  Between  1906  and  1914 
the  history  of  the  Unionist  party  may  be  sum- 
marised as  an  alternation  of  ** nights-out*'  and 
sick  headaches.  The  Member  for  Dublin  Univer- 
sity led  the  revels;  it  was  Mr.  Cave's  office  to 
administer  the  soda-water  next  day,  and  smooth 
over  matters  with  the  magistrate.  He  was  put 
up  whenever  it  suited  the  purpose  of  leaders  to 
pose  as  over-tried  patriots  who  had  perhaps  been 
led  into  some  excess.  Mr.  Cave's  entire  respecta- 
bility was  almost  as  great  an  asset  as  his  talents. 

217 


218  ALL  AND  SUNDKY 

The  latter  were,  perhaps,  rather  over-rated;  but 
that  was  only  natural:  nothing  is  more  graceful 
or  touching  than  the  reverence  of  a  young  prodigal 
for  the  solicitor  who  gets  him  off  with  a  nominal 
fine  or  vanquishes  a  hungry  horde  of  creditors. 
Mr.  Solomon  Pell  was  not  more  the  oracle  of  the 
Pickwickian  coachmen  than  Mr.  Cave  of  those 
very  Die  Hards  from  whom  he  was  most  widely 
separated  in  temperament  and  perhaps  in  con- 
viction. But,  indeed,  nearly  all  men  conspired  to 
speak  well  of  him.  He  enjoyed  vast  respect  at 
the  Chancery  Bar;  his  constituency  of  Kingston 
gave  him  no  kind  of  trouble;  the  whole  county  of 
Surrey  was  his  club;  and  while  his  words  carried 
weight  in  the  House  of  Commons,  he  had  no 
enemy  in  that  assembly.  Perhaps  no  man  at 
Westminster  had  better  reason  to  be  satisfied  with 
the  present  and  at  ease  regarding  the  future. 

When  the  war  came,  Mr.  Cave,  unlike  many 
others,  dismissed  party  politics  from  his  mind. 
He  took  up  war  work  of  an  extremely  prosaic 
but  very  useful  kind.  He  placed  himself  at  the 
disposal  of  the  Foreign  Office,  and  without  fee 
or  reward  applied  himself  to  reduce  the  immense 
volume  of  legal  work  arising  out  of  contraband. 
At  that  time  he  could  probably  have  served  the 
State  in  no  better  way.  But  it  was  not  a  sensa- 
tional way,  and  could  have  no  sensational  reward. 


VISCOUNT  CAVE  219 

Mr.  Cave  was  neither  a  public  joke  nor  a  public 
danger,  and  so,  when  the  law  officers  were  re- 
placed on  the  formation  of  the  first  Coalition 
Government,  he  was  forgotten  or  deliberately  over- 
looked. Later  in  the  year,  however,  Sir  Edward 
Carson  left  the  Government,  and  thus  it  happened 
that  Mr.  Cave  became,  in  the  late  autumn  of  1915, 
Sir  George  and  Solicitor-General.  In  that  capacity 
lie  speedily  showed  that  the  expectations  formed 
in  Opposition  were  not  unfounded.  He  took  charge 
of  measures  as  to  the  manner  born,  and  showed 
that  a  style  of  speaking  perhaps  a  trifle  too  un- 
impassioned  for  a  party  leader  was  an  eminently 
efficient  instrument  for  the  purposes  of  a  Min- 
ister. 

The  coup  d'etat  of  December,  1916,  brought  Sir 
George  Cave  his  greater  opportunity.  He  became 
Home  Secretary  in  the  reconstructed  Ministry. 
In  that  capacity  it  fell  to  him  to  steer  through 
Parliament  that  enormously  complex  and  contro- 
versial measure,  the  Representation  of  the  People 
Act;  and  the  success  with  which  he  accomplished 
the  task  seemed  to  have  established  his  Parlia- 
mentary reputation  on  an  impregnable  basis.  But 
these  expectations  were  not  justified.  The  one 
triumph  was  succeeded  by  a  number  of  compara- 
tive failures.  It  was  soon  apparent  that  Sir 
George  Cave  was  one  of  those  pleasant,  intelligent 


220  ALL  AND  SUNDRY 

men  who  M  to  admiration  quiet  posts  in  quiet 
times,  but  have  neither  the  talents  nor  the  tem- 
perament necessary  to  a  **  skilful  pilot  in  ex- 
tremity." Sir  George  Cave  was  by  no  means 
* 'pleased  with  the  danger  when  the  waves  ran 
high''  over  Aliens  Bills  and  such  contentious  sub- 
jects. Not  that  he  was  a  coward.  But  a  life 
in  which  respectable  abilities,  respectably  exer- 
cised, had  earned  a  more  than  respectable  reward, 
had  unfitted  him  for  the  ruder  side  of  the  game 
of  politics.  **I  bruised  my  shins  the  other  day,'' 
said  Master  Slender,  **with  playing  at  sword  and 
dagger  with  a  master  of  fence;  and  by  my  troth 
I  cannot  bear  the  smell  of  hot  meat  since."  Some- 
thing of  this  qualm  seems  to  have  overtaken  Sir 
George  Cave  when,  after  all  men  have  spoken  well 
of  him,  a  few  **very  ill-favoured  rough  things" 
presumed  to  criticise.  He  was  worried  by  back 
bench  revilings.  He  was  pained  by  newspaper 
comments.  Every  day  the  Court  of  Appeal,  with 
its  curtained  dignity,  called  him  with  a  more 
alluring  murmur  of  invitation.  And  one  morn- 
ing the  world — or  that  part  of  it  which  troubles 
about  such  matters — read  that  Sir  George  Cave 
had  accepted  legal  preferment  and  a  viscounty. 
He  had  earned  them,  no  doubt.  But  there  was  a 
certain  irony  in  the  memory  that  the  new  peer 
had  once  been  acclaimed  as  **The  Man" — the  Mas- 


VISCOUNT  CAVE  221 

ter  Mind  that  only  awaited  full  authority  to  **win 
the  war.**  In  justice  to  Lord  Cave,  who  numbers 
modesty  among  his  many  virtues,  it  should  be 
added  that  he  was  probably  as  much  amazed  as 
anybody  by  this  discovery. 


ME.  LEO  MAXSE 

If  you  are  much  in  places  where  men  of  the 
Conservative  sort  foregather  to  eat,  drink,  and 
make  speeches,  you  cannot  fail  sooner  or  later 
to  mark  a  man,  dark  and  lean,  whose  earnest  and 
almost  fierce  expression  contrasts  oddly  with  the 
tone  of  the  gathering. 

Everything  round  him  is  British  and  post- 
prandial. The  Empire,  of  course,  is  tottering  to 
its  fall,  but  the  company  bears  up  surprisingly. 
It  lies  back  and  enjoys  its  cigars,  while  the  chief 
speaker  denounces  presumptuous  Eadicalism,  offi- 
cially represented  probably  by  the  chief  speaker's 
cousins,  nephews,  and  brothers-in-law.  He  points 
out  how  the  air  is  quivering  with  revolution;  how 
the  floodgates  are  opened,  and  bottomless  anarchy 
threatens;  how  the  Church  is  toppling  to  destruc- 
tion, and  the  glory  of  Burton-on-Trent  may  soon 
be  one  witK  Nineveh  and  Tyre.  A  bad  business, 
surely.  But  meanwhile  we  are  left  a  healthy  in- 
terest in  good  Burgundy,  and  the  savour  of  a  first- 
rate  Corona  is  not  ungrateful.  **  Black,  please, 
and  a  little  brandy.  .  .  .  Hear,  hear!  Good 
point,  that.'' 

The  dark  man  lets  the  waiter  fill  what  glasses 

222 


MR.  LEO  MAXSE  223 

he  likes;  all  that  is  nothing  to  him.  He  seems 
as  little  in  tune  with  the  feasting  as  the  spectral 
bridegroom  of  the  fair  Imogen: 

"His  air  was  terrific;  he  uttered  no  sound; 
He  spoke  not,  he  moved  not,  he  looked  not  around; 
But  earnestly  gazed  on  the  bride." 

With  such  intensity  does  Mr.  Leo  Maxse  fix 
his  dark  eyes  on  the  eminent  Conservative  who 
is  venturing  to  declare  the  faith  that  is  in  him. 
Mr.  Maxse  has  no  faith  in  the  eminent  Conserv- 
ative's faith.  He  is  on  the  watch  for  heresy,  and 
if  he  finds  it  will  discourse  thereon  to  the  extent 
of  twenty-five  pages  in  the  next  month's  National 
Review.  K?  Be  very  sure  he  will  find  it.  Where 
heresy  is  concerned  Mr.  Maxse  has  the  occult 
powers  of  the  late  Judge  Jeffreys.  **I  can  smell 
a  Presbyterian  a  mile  off,''  declared  that  stanch 
Churchman.  With  the  same  mysterious  certainty 
Mr.  Maxse  can  detect  heterodoxy  wherever  it  ex- 
ists, and  perhaps  even  where  it  does  not  exist. 
To  him  is  revealed  that  which  is  hidden.  His 
nose  is  as  sensitive  as  the  small  dog's  that  finds 
truffles;  for  everything  fungoid  and  underground 
his  instinct  is  sure.  He  can  tell  you  exactly  how 
it  was  that  the  Labour  party  was  induced  to  vote, 
against  all  considerations  of  honour  and  propriety, 
for  the  Second  Reading  of  the  Bill  to  Prevent 
Anything  Being  Done,  and  what  price  was  paid 


224  ALL  AND  SUNDEY 

for  the  Irish  vote  in  the  Peddleton  by-election. 
He  might  have  been  under  the  ex-Kaiser's  dinner- 
table  when  Lord  Haldane  communed  with  the 
'*very  big  men"  of  Berlin,  so  precisely  can  he 
inform  you  what  was  said.  Mr.  Lloyd  George 
himself  probably  could  not  tell  exactly  what  made 
him  declare  for  war  in  1914.  But  Mr.  Maxse  has 
the  whole  story  pat. 

Still  he  is  far  from  being  a  Jack  Archer.  If 
omniscience  is  his  foible,  he  does  really  know  a 
great  deal.  He  belongs  to  the  circle  in  which 
he  that  has  **yaws  to  yaw,"  as  the  curate  put 
it,  can  **yaw"  all  sorts  of  things,  true  and  un- 
true; and  only  a  little  shrewdness  is  needed  to 
sift  the  wheat  from  the  chaff.  Mr.  Maxse  is  the 
son  of  that  Admiral  Maxse  who  used  to  be  a 
prominent  figure  on  provincial  Unionist  platforms 
twenty  years  or  so  ago.  No  doubt  Admiral  Maxse 's 
son  could  himself  have  done  well  in  politics  had 
he  been  able  to  bow  his  neck  to  the  yoke,  but 
he  has  preferred  lonely  freedom  to  salaried  servi- 
tude. In  yielding  to  his  temperament  he  probably 
acted  wisely.  Made  to  be  a  Bedouin  in  politics, 
he  could  hardly  have  become  a  sleek  Arab  of 
the  bazaars.  He  can  be  content  with  a  narrow 
formula,  as  the  Bedouin  with  his  narrow  tent, 
but,  if  stuffiness  possesses  no  terrors  for  him, 
want  of  liberty  does.     The  Bedouin  revels  in  acci- 


ME.  LEO  MAXSE  225 

dental  feuds  with  his  own  people,  while  preserving 
a  steady  hatred  for  the  outsider;  and  in  the  same 
spirit  Mr.  Maxse,  treating  anti-Radicalism  as  the 
piece  de  resistance  of  his  life-feast,  delights  in  an 
occasional  bonne  houche  of  family  quarrel. 

It  was  he  who  invented  the  mystic  **B.M.G." 
which  circulated  in  1911  with  something  of  the 
child-like  solemnity  of  an  old  Jacobite  watch- 
word. *^ Balfour  must  go,'*  said  Mr.  Maxse,  and 
people  laughed.  His  sling-stone  seemed  pitifully 
inadequate  to  the  felling  of  a  giant.  Yet  the  giant 
was  felled.  Again,  it  was  Mr.  Maxse  who  fired 
the  first,  or  almost  the  first,  shot  in  the  Marconi 
campaign.  He  was  writing  about  the  famous  deal 
months  before  less  courageous  or  less  well-informed 
journalists  touched  it.  He  named  names,  dotted 
**i's''  and  crossed  **t's''  with  superb  intrepidity. 
For  sheer  courage,  indeed,  he  has  no  equal.  There 
is  no  beating  about  the  bush,  no  **we  could  an 
if  we  would,*'  or  *4f  we  list  to  speak,'*  or  any 
such  ambiguous  giving  out.  Mr.  Maxse  puts  every- 
thing down  in  plain  black  and  white,  using  a 
dialect  of  studied  violence  which  is  sometimes 
extremely  effective  for  its  purpose,  but  tends  to 
tire  with  its  perpetual  over-emphasis  and  its  ex- 
cessive fluency. 

One  wonders  sometimes  how  he  ^*  'scapes  kill- 
ing."    For  it  is  no  light  risk  nowadays  to  deal 


226  ALL  AND  SUNDRY 

critically  with  the  mighty.  There  was  a  time 
when  the  pamphleteering  bravo  could  say  much 
what  he  liked  of  a  Minister.  There  is  an  old 
story  of  a  troublesome  North  Country  visitor  at 
a  Riviera  hotel  who  declined  resolutely  to  pay 
thirty  francs  for  butter  he  had  not  eaten.  The 
staff  was  in  a  quandary.  It  was  against  all  hotel- 
keepers'  morality  to  waive  a  charge  once  made; 
on  the  other  hand,  the  Englishman  clearly  would 
not  pay.  The  tactful  manager  got  out  of  the 
difficulty  by  one  of  those  inspirations  that  only 
occur  to  master  minds.  **Put  it  on  to  the  bill 
of  the  Grand  Duke,"  he  told  the  clerk;  **I  am 
quite  sure  His  Highness  will  not  mind.''  Such 
disregard  for  small  charges  was  common  enough 
among  the  statesmen  of  a  few  years  ago.  Con- 
fident of  their  own  integrity,  they  cared  little 
who  assailed  it  from  without,  and  they  knew  ex- 
actly how  to  deal  with  attacks  in  the  House  of 
Commons.  Gladstone  never  brought  actions  for 
libel  over  the  ** murder"  of  Gordon;  Parnell  met 
The  Times  forgery  by  a  simple  denial  in  the 
House  of  Commons.  But  some  modem  Ministers 
have  developed  a  strange  sensitiveness  to  Press 
criticism,  and  if  it  cannot  be  dealt  with  by  blan- 
dishments, they  are  quite  prepared  to  use  all  the 
terrors  of  the  law,  criminal  as  well  as  civil.  To 
tell  the  exact  truth  about  public  men  to-day  is 


MR.  LEO  MAXSE  227 

as  exciting  as  big-game  hunting,  and  far  more 
expensive. 

Fear  of  consequences,  however,  will  certainly 
not  silence  Mr.  Maxse.  He  may  be  a  Quixote  for 
his  discretion,  but  he  is  certainly  an  Amadis  for 
his  valour.  Men,  wineskins,  and  windmills  are 
all  one  to  him,  and  he  is  ready  for  any  odds.  His 
influence,  as  already  noted,  is  very  considerable 
with  the  Protectionist-Jingo  section  of  the  Con- 
servative party,  and  is  hardly  explained  by  the 
direct  sway  he  exercises  through  the  National  Re- 
view, of  which,  it  was  stated  some  time  ago,  he 
himself  writes  seven-tenths.  The  audience  reached 
by  a  monthly  review  is  necessarily  small,  and  Mr. 
Maxse  ^s  peculiar  style  possesses  no  great  popular 
appeal.  But  he  has  a  claim  on  the  ear  of  one 
editor,  and  on  the  space  of  another;  he  can  often 
speak  when  he  wishes  through  other  men's  mouths; 
and,  with  his  true  frondeur's  instinct  for  any  ally 
that  will  serve  his  turn,  he  manages  to  reach  a 
far  larger  audience  than  his  ostensible  one.  On 
more  than  one  occasion  the  energetic  employment 
of  his  varied  resources  has  undoubtedly  determined 
more  than  mere  personal  issues;  he  himself  has 
made  a  larger  claim  in  regard  to  one  most  im- 
portant decision  of  the  war. 

The  Maxse  philosophy  is  inherently  simple, 
though  it  leads  its  holder  into  complicated  courses. 


228  ALL  AND  SUNDEY 

He  is  for  the  whole  Conservative  animal,  and 
no  nonsense  about  it.  For  him  Jingo  is  only  an 
affectionate  diminutive  for  St.  George  of  Merrie 
England.  Sometimes  he  may  be  indined  to  doubt 
whether  we  can  be  saved  at  all;  pessimism  is 
the  prevailing  mood  of  his  school.  But  he  is  quite 
certain  that  our  only  chance  is  undiluted  Tory- 
ism. He  is  strongly  suspicious,  therefore,  of  the 
Georgian  ascendancy;  whoever  else  fails  to  ob- 
serve the  relative  positions  of  the  Prime  Minister's 
toe  and  the  agreed  Coalition  line,  Mr.  Maxse 
will  not.  All  leaders,  indeed,  he  watches  with 
unsleeping  suspicion.  He  knows  they  are  poor, 
timid  creatures  of  compromise  and  the  half- 
measure,  and  that  at  any  time  they  may  be 
** nobbled.''  In  the  bright  lexicon  of  Mr.  Maxse 
there  is  no  such  adjective  as  **un-nobblable." 
Everybody  is  sure  to  be  nobbled  sooner  or  later, 
and  then  it  becomes  the  stern  duty  of  Mr.  Maxse 
to  get  busy  with  his  armoury.  He  is  almost  old- 
Japanese  in  his  conception  of  what  the  honour 
of  the  clan  demands.  A  mere  Liberal  is  a  foreign 
devil,  to  be  slain  carelessly  if  he  comes  within 
range  of  the  two-handed  sword;  a  Tory  recreant 
is  another  matter;  it  may  be  years  before  the 
disembowelling  knife  can  be  commended  to  him 
without  scandal  to  the  tribe,  but  the  watch  never 
falters,  and  the  victim's  day  duly  arrives.     Let 


MR.  LEO  MAXSE  229 

Mr.   George  be   very   careful   about   any   line  lie 
happens  to  have  toed. 

To  be  quite  serious,  it  is  rather  a  pity  that 
Mr.  Maxse  is  not  a  little  more  or  a  little  less 
than  Mr.  Maxse.  He  might  be  a  more  valuable 
public  asset  if  he  made  himself  the  watch-dog  of 
the  nation,  and  not  of  part  of  a  party.  He  might 
be  of  very  real  value  to  his  party,  and  through 
it  to  the  public,  if  he  could  persuade  himself  to 
be  a  little  less  extravagant.  But  no  man  suc- 
cessfully combats  his  temperament,  and  Mr.  Maxse 
is  quite  simply  a  fanatic  who  believes  that  the 
perfect  man  is  the  perfect  Tory  he  is  fated  never 
to  meet.  But  he  will  go  on  to  the  end  looking 
for  the  perfect  Tory,  and  rending  all  who  dis- 
appoint after  raising  his  hopes. 


MB.  HEKBEET  SAMUEL 

Everybody  knows  the  man  who  is  too  neat  to 
be  quite  well  dressed  and  too  polite  to  be  quite 
well  bred.  This  description  does  not  apply  lit- 
erally to  Mr.  Herbert  Samuel,  whose  appearance 
and  manner  never  swerve  by  a  hair's-breadth  from 
the  just  mean.  But  intellectually  he  represents 
the  type  in  our  politics. 

Mr.  SamuePs  superlative  efficiency  produces 
something  closely  resembling  depression.  Its  effect 
is  felt  very  generally.  Those  who  constitute  the 
Opposition,  for  the  time  being,  are  conscious 
enough  of  it,  but  perhaps  it  does  even  more  to 
dishearten  those  whose  cause  Mr.  Samuel  happens 
to  be  supporting  with  great  ability.  One  feels 
somehow  that  it  must  be  a  defective  case  to  need 
such  dexterity  in  presentation:  or,  at  lowest,  that 
the  case  would  be  very  feeble  when  stated  by 
a  less  gifted  advocate.  A  very  old  Liberal  of 
the  more  hearty  type  once  described  to  the  writer 
the  effect  on  him  of  Mr.  SamuePs  speaking.  *'I 
have  known,''  he  said,  **some  very  great  Parlia- 
mentary leaders — Gladstone,  Bright,  Chamberlain 
in  his  good  period,  Morley,  Harcourt.  Some  of 
them,  the  best,  made  one  feel  as  great  as  them- 

230 


MR.  HERBERT  SAMUEL  231 

selves.  Others  made  one  feel  of  moderate  but 
sufficient  stature.  But  Samuel  always  makes  me 
feel  a  very  small  person  engaged  in  a  very  petty 
business.  And  I  only  begin  really  to  suspect  the 
soundness  of  a  measure  when  he  has  supported 
it  with  twenty  arguments,  and  I  can  find  an  answer 
to  none.'' 

Lord  Hugh  Cecil,  in  one  of  those  infrequent 
bursts  of  splendid  eloquence  which  awe  an  as- 
sembly unused  to  great  rhetoric,  once  likened  the 
soul  of  the  intellectual,  moral,  and  right-living 
unbeliever — it  was  Lord  Morley  he  had  in  mind 
— to  a  splendid  throne  in  a  stately  chamber. 
After  describing  all  its  glories  of  design  and  gar- 
niture, he  ended  abruptly,  **But  aftei  dl  it  is 
an  empty  room."  It  is  perhaps  this  sense  of 
the  lack  of  something  vital  that  gives  a  kind  of 
forlornness  to  the  mechanical  perfections  of  Mr. 
Herbert  Samuel.  He  speaks  well,  with  less  than 
Mr.  Asquith's  force,  but  more  than  Mr.  Asquith's 
precision;  no  raggedness  about  his  sentences,  no 
fatiguing  parentheses,  no  woolly  qualifications,  not 
a  word  misused  or  a  stress  out  of  place.  But 
there  is  this  difference:  Mr.  Asquith's  is  the 
precision  of  the  master  workman,  and  Mr.  Samuel 's 
of  the  first-class  machine.  Mr.  Asquith,  it  is 
realised,  would  not  argue  the  opposite  case  as 
well;  with  Mr.   Samuel  one  feels  that  with  the 


232  ALL  AND  SUNDRY 

pulling  of  a  lever  the  machine  would  run  as 
smoothly  reversed.  No  doubt  the  feeling  is  un- 
just, but  there  it  is. 

Mr.  SamuePs  Ministerial  manner  suffered  from 
the  same  mechanical  certitude.  His  only  tense 
was  the  plus-que-parfait.  The  first  time  he  took 
charge  of  a  measure  he  showed  as  much  skill  in 
dealing  with  critical  opponents  and  too  enthusi- 
astic friends  as  if  he  had  spent  all  his  life  at  the 
game;  thenceforward  he  could  but  repeat  the 
miracle;  and  it  is  only  human  to  yawn  at  wonders 
that  never  cease.  It  is  a  wise  juggler  who  begins 
with  a  few  ivory  balls  and  works  up  gradually 
to  the  grand  climax  of  keeping  in  the  air  five 
lighted  lamps  and  the  furniture  of  a  small  flat. 
Mr.  Samuel  would  have  found  more  sympathy 
had  he  broken  down  a  little  early  in  his  career; 
a  failure  now  would  not  do;  people  would  only 
diagnose  something  wrong  with  the  exhaust  or 
the  carburettor,  and  talk  about  getting  a  new 
machine.  It  is  a  very  serious  thing  to  establish 
such  a  reputation.  All  the  negative  virtues  of  a 
Minister  are  Mr.  SamuePs.  He  is  never  hasty, 
never  gives  himself  away,  is  impervious  to  rude- 
ness, ridicule,  or  invective,  and  moves  towards 
his  object  with  a  sort  of  inexorable  gentleness, 
as  of  a  Juggernaut  car  fitted  with  pneumatic 
tyres.     He  is  never  tempted  to  the  cheap  sneer. 


MR.  HERBERT  SAMUEL  233 

Nothing  will  induce  him  to  score  off  friend  or 
foe  after  the  manner  of  the  young  in  politics. 
The  bumptiousness  which  has  brought  more  than 
one  brilliant  beginner  to  the  ground  is  wholly 
alien  from  his  nature.  He  does  not  tolerate  fools 
gladly,  but  he  accepts  them  as  part  of  the  scheme 
of  things;  he  even  shows  a  cold  magnanimity 
to  a  more  than  usually  stupid  adversary.  It  is 
doubtful  whether  he  ever  attempted  a  joke;  he 
certainly  never  made  one;  jokes  are  not  business, 
and  he  is  above  all  businesslike.  He  is  patient 
and  polite  to  the  heckler,  never  declines  informa- 
tion without  a  plausible  reason,  and  generally 
vouchsafes  a  courteous  if  frigid  word  to  soften 
the  necessary  rebuff.  In  exposition  he  is  careful 
to  save  his  audience  the  least  trouble;  few  poli- 
ticians are  so  wholly  lucid;  prepared  for  almost 
any  extremity  of  human  stupidity,  he  is  patient 
even  when  he  finds  his  worst  expectations  ex- 
ceeded. Yet  many  a  faithful  Commoner  would 
prefer  to  be  called  an  idiot,  bluntly  and  heartily, 
than  listen  to  Mr.  Samuel's  ** Though  I  am  con- 
scious of  no  obscurity,  the  honourable  Member's 
question  suggests  a  possibility  of  misunderstand- 
ing, and  I  will  therefore  make  the  point,  if  possible, 
even  more  clear.'' 

In  administration  Mr.  Samuel  conveys  an  equal 
impression  of  complete  and  almost  inhuman  effi- 


234  ALL  AND  SUNDEY 

ciency.  He  has  filled  several  posts — Local  Gov- 
ernment Board,  Post  Office,  Home  Office — with 
credit,  and  with  his  business  habits  and  acute 
intellect  it  is  easy  to  believe  the  current  legend 
that  whatever  he  touches   is  well  done. 

Such  was  Mr.  Samuel  as  Minister.  In  opposi- 
tion he  did  not  quite  support  the  reputation  he 
made  in  office.  The  man  was  the  same — or  shall 
we  say  the  machine! — ^but  it  worked  a  little  less 
surely.  Mr.  Samuel  in  the  last  months  of  the 
last  Parliament  did  not  seem  quite  to  have  made 
up  his  mind  whether  to  follow  Mr.  Asquith  or  to 
lead,  say,  Mr.  Pringle.  Hence  a  certain  wobbling 
in  the  once  exact  flywheel,  and  just  the  suggestion 
that  the  lubrication  was  less  constant.  Mr.  Sam- 
uel's temper,  in  fact,  seems  to  have  been  slightly 
affected  by  memories  of  the  changes  that  inter- 
rupted his  career,  and  his  criticisms  of  the  Lloyd 
George  Government  sometimes  betrayed  a  rather 
niggling  and  bitter  tendency  unusual  to  him.  Not 
that  his  ground  was  ill  chosen;  he  usually  attacked 
the  Government  on  its  most  vulnerable  point — 
finance — and  a  much  less  able  man  would  have 
had  no  difficulty  in  making  out  his  case.  It  was 
more  in  spirit  than  in  matter  that  his  speeches 
contrasted  with  those  usual  to  Mr.  Asquith  and 
with  his  own  earlier  manner.  It  would  be  un- 
generous to  suspect  a  man  of  Mr.  Samuel's  calibre 


MR.  HERBERT  SAMUEL  235 

of  anything  so  vnlgar  as  personal  piqne.  But  it 
is  probable  that  he  really  had  an  artist's  irrita- 
tion at  seeing  others  mismanage  what  he  knew 
he  could  do  well. 

Such  professional  pride  is  not  unbefitting  in 
a  very  professional  politician.  Mr.  Samuel  is  a 
professional  if  there  ever  was  one.  His  career 
was  determined  from  his  Balliol  days;  he  got 
up  politics  as  other  industrious  young  men  get 
up  law  or  medicine,  with  the  firm  resolve  to 
succeed  mightily  therein.  He  had  only  left  Oxford 
two  years  when  he  contested  South  Oxfordshire, 
unsuccessfully,  as  a  Liberal.  After  another  vain 
assault  on  that  division  he  was  put  in  for  the 
Cleveland  Division  of  Yorkshire,  and  when  Sir 
Henry  Campbell-Bannerman  came  into  power  he 
earned  the  reward  of  undoubtedly  considerable 
party  services.  It  would  be  interesting  to  know 
on  what  grounds  he  adopted  Liberal  principles. 
The  once  natural  tendency  of  Jewish  politicians 
to  Liberalism  has  long  ceased  to  operate;  and 
there  is  nothing  in  the  texture  of  Mr.  Samuel's 
mind  to  suggest  any  tumultuous  enthusiasm  for 
the  causes  which  modem  Radicalism  professes  to 
have  at  heart.  But,  having  made  his  choice,  he 
has  never  swerved  in  his  allegiance  or  in  personal 
loyalty  to  his  leader.  He  went  unhesitatingly  into 
the  cold  shades  with  Mr.  Asquith;  he  shared  his 


236  ALL  AND  SUNDRY 

leader's  discomfiture  at  the  polls;  and,  unlike  his 
kinsman,  Mr.  Montagu,  has  never  shown  the  least 
disposition  to  parley  with  Mr.  Asquith's  suc- 
cessors. 

There  are  some  who  predict  for  him  a  great 
future,  and  superficially  nohody  has  claims  more 
substantial.  Nor  does  he  suffer  much  in  com- 
parison with  other  possible  candidates.  Nearly 
all  the  men  now  associated  with  Mr.  Asquith  are 
less  perfect  examples  of  his  type,  and  if  it  be 
objected  that  he  lacks  the  temperament  for  a 
popular  leader,  the  retort  is  readily  forthcoming 
that  Sir  John  Simon,  Mr.  McKenna,  and  Mr. 
Eunciman  are  not  precisely  men  round  whom 
legend  grows.  So  it  is  quite  possible  that  Mr. 
Samuel  may  realise  the  future  of  which,  it  is  said, 
he  has  dreamed  almost  from  boyhood.  The  future 
of  a  Liberal  party  under  him  is  another  story. 


ME.  HAKOLD  BEGBIE 

It  may  be  doubted  whether  there  has  ever  been 
anyone  quite  like  Mr.  Harold  Begbie.  But  he 
has  his  affinities,  and  they  stand  as  far  apart  as 
Mr.  William  Le  Queux,  the  Rev.  R.  J.  Campbell, 
and  Mr.  George  R.  Sims.  One  may  even  detect 
in  him  traces  of  Mr.  Guy  Thome  and  Mr.  Charles 
Garvice;  and,  passing  to  the  realm  of  fiction,  one 
notes  a  solitary  point  of  resemblance  to  Mr.  Bob 
Sawyer.  Like  that  accommodating  person,  Mr. 
Begbie  is  in  opinion  **a  sort  of  a  plaid' ';  and  a 
plaid,  while  the  easiest  possible  thing  to  recognise, 
is  one  of  the  most  difficult  to  describe. 

**I  was  thrown  by  fortune,''  says  Mr.  Begbie 
of  himself,  **into  the  ranks  of  the  writers."  He 
does  not  inform  us  exactly  how  it  happened  that 
the  son  of  a  Suffolk  clergyman  and  the  grandson 
of  a  British  General  enlisted  in  the  **  questionable 
cohort";  but  Nature  clearly  designed  him  for  a 
talker  in  some  kind.  Perhaps  he  would  have  done 
better  (except  in  the  worldly  sense)  to  follow 
the  paternal  career;  one  cannot  help  feeling  that 
a  capital  curate  was  lost  to  the  Church  when 
he  took  to  journalism  and  literature.  For  Mr. 
Begbie,    on   the    evidence    of    a    Salvation   Army 

237 


238  ALL  AND  SUNDRY 

Colonel — he  has  written,  by  the  way,  a  sympa- 
thetic Life  of  General  Booth — is  one  of  the  **most 
spiritual-minded"  of  living  men;  and  his  outlook 
on  life  is  not  dissimilar  to  that  of  the  Reverend 
Hopley  Porter.  In  other  circumstances  it  might 
be  true  of  him  that: 

"He  plays  the  airy  flute, 

And  looks  depressed  and  blighted; 
Doves  round  about  him  toot, 
And  lambkins  dance  delighted." 

Or,  again,  he  might: 

"In  old  maids'  albums,  too. 
Stick  seaweed,  yes,  and  name  it." 

For  the  sympathies  of  Mr.  Begbie  are  wide  as 
nature,  animate  and  inanimate.  He  will  rhapso- 
dise over  a  country  sunset  or  the  dusty  trees  on 
the  Thames  Embankment;  he  will  weep  over  an 
interesting  murderer;  write  a  set  of  Jingo  verses; 
pat  a  Bishop  on  the  back  or  ** write  up''  a  hos- 
pital; come  to  the  rescue  of  a  woman  with  a  prob- 
lem or  a  politician  without  a  place;  and,  in  short, 
deal  *4n  a  spirit  of  love"  with  anything  that 
comes  his  way.  Like  Diderot^ — it  is  his  own  un- 
assuming comparison — he  has  ** tried  everything." 
He  has  *4ntimate  friendships  with  the  great  and 
the  low,  with  the  learned  and  the  unlearned,  with 
the  fashionable  and  the  unfashionable,  with  the 
good  and  the  wicked."    *'Were  I  to  make,"  says 


MR.  HAEOLD  BEGBIE  239 

Mr.  Begbie,  *^a  catalogue  of  my  friends  with  the 
great,  you  would  either  think  that  I  had  been 
bom  with  a  silver  spoon  in  my  mouth  or  that 
the  most  puissant  of  fairy  godmothers  had  stood 
sponsor  for  me  at  the  font;  and  if  I  were  to 
make  a  chronicle  of  my  friendships  with  the  wicked 
and  miserable,  you  would  fly  to  denounce  me  to  the 
police." 

This  interesting  passage  is  introduced  for  two 
reasons.  First,  it  summarises  Mr.  Begbie 's  claims 
to  the  ear  of  the  public.  Secondly,  it  illustrates 
reasonably  well  the  literary  method  which  has 
gained  him  a  welcome  in  so  many  popular  periodi- 
cals. Carlyle  has  described  with  some  acerbity 
what  he  calls  the  ^* Castile  soap'*  style  of  writing. 
You  take  a  cubic  inch  of  respectable  Castile  soap; 
this  is  your  substance.  You  **  lather  it  up  with 
loquacity,  joviality,  commercial-inn  banter,  lead- 
ing-article philosophy,  or  other  aqueous  vehicles,*' 
till  it  fills  *^one  puncheon  wine  measure,  the  vol- 
ume of  four  hundred  pages,"  and  say  ** There  1" 
**This  is  the  problem;  let  a  man  have  credit,  of 
his  kind,  for  doing  his  problem." 

Mr.  Begbie  deserves  all  credit  of  a  kind.  In 
one  sense  he  may  be  called  a  master,  and  even 
a  despot,  of  language.  He  calls  up  words  by  a 
sort  of  conscriptive  edict,  and,  like  so  many  con- 
scriptionists,  is  not  specially  careful  how  he  uses 


240  ALL  AND  SUNDRY 

them.  Are  they  not  cheap  enough?  It  matters 
little  that  some  noble  substantives  are  put  to 
menial  use,  or  that  five  incompetent  adjectives 
half-do  the  work  of  one  **  soldier-like ' '  word.  This 
army  is  not  meant  for  fighting,  mainly,  and,  for 
other  things — ga  marche.  It  looks  a  thing  of 
*'mass  and  charge'^;  there  are  plenty  of  trumpets 
and  banners;  and  it  goes  by  with  a  certain  swing. 
Some  stern  Foch  of  criticism  may  murmur  that 
numbers  are  not  everything,  but  in  Mr.  Begbie's 
world — and  the  cashier's — a  thousand  words  are 
a  thousand  words.  The  proportion  of  camp-fol- 
lowers to  bayonets  is  not  very  material. 

Still,  such  popularity  as  Mr.  Begbie's — and  he 
must  be  popular,  or  the  editors  do  not  know  their 
business — must  be  based  on  something.  That 
something,  probably,  is  his  unique  power  of  sob- 
bing. '*I  never  see  such  a  feller,''  said  Sam 
Weller  of  Mr.  Job  Trotter.  *^ Blessed  if  I  don't 
think  he's  got  a  main  in  his  head  as  is  always 
turned  on."  Mr.  Begbie  has  some  such  reservoir 
of  universal  sympathy  close  to  the  surface.  He 
is  ** human"  in  the  full  Fleet  Street  sense  of  the 
words;  tears  well  at  command  from  his  fountain 
pen;  the  aqueous  elements  in  his  composition  have 
an  infectious  saltness.  '*I  love  London,"  he  says, 
** because  its  people  are  the  kindest,  cheerfullest, 
bravest,  and  most  sentimental  people  to  be  fouud 


MR.  HAROLD  BEGBIE  241 

under  any  canopy  of  smoke  in  the  four  corners 
of  the  globe/'  The  last  adjective  is  significant. 
It  is  in  his  sentimental  appeals  to  the  sentimental 
that  Mr.  Begbie's  influence,  whatever  it  may  be, 
resides.  He  knows  exactly  when  to  put  the  patri- 
otic, religious,  comic,  or  seamy-side  disc  on  the 
gramophone  of  his  mind.  He  says  in  a  multitude 
of  words  what  the  **nice,''  decent,  middle-class 
man  feels,  but  can  find  no  words  for.  In  his 
person  shallow  calls   to  shallow. 

At  bottom  Mr.  Begbie  seems  to  stand  for  the 
kind  of  people  who  want  to  do  the  right  thing 
without  much  personal  inconvenience,  who  feel 
a  thrill  of  renunciation  when  sending  a  small 
cheque  to  a  charity,  are  ready  for  any  kind  of 
*^ reform '*  that  is  not  ** subversive,'*  like  to  ex- 
perience the  excitement  of  religion  without  tiring 
themselves  with  the  Litany,  and  have  a  general 
preference  for  equilateral  triangles  with  three  un- 
equal sides.  He  is  a  quite  English  product;  one 
could  not  imagine  his  life  in  France,  where  he 
who  aspires  to  speak  must  mean  something  defi- 
nite, and,  if  he  talks  nonsense,  ntust  at  least 
talk  one  kind  of  nonsense  consistently  for  three 
months  together. 

Mr.  Begbie  is  to  be  admired  as  an  industrious 
man.  There  is,  indeed,  no  brighter  example  extant 
of  the  full  use  of  the  talent.     At  several  years 


242  ALL  AND  SUNDEY 

short  of  fifty  his  collected  works  would  fill  a 
library.  He  is,  perhaps,  not  to  be  scorned  as  an 
influence  in  some  desirable  directions.  He  breathes 
a  certain  English  pleasantness  and  English  man- 
liness, rather  in  the  kind  of  the  conscientious 
prefect  in  a  Boy's  Own  Paper  school  story:  that 
remarkable  kind  of  boy  who  is  at  once  a  good 
cricketer  and  an  earnest  Evangelical,  keen  on  keep- 
ing up  his  average  and  touched  with  the  desire 
to  *^do  good.''  He  tells  the  despondent  to  *^buck 
up,"  digs  the  selfish  in  their  waistcoats,  confidently 
informs  us  one  day  that  the  powers  of  darkness 
are  prevailing,  and  the  next  that  the  Millennium 
will  arrive  on  Tuesday  week.  All  this  is  very 
excellent  and  stimulating,  like  the  sermons  of  the 
curate  Mr.  Begbie  might  well  have  been.  But 
there  are  disadvantages  also  in  such  jerky  sim- 
plicity. Mr.  Begbie,  like  many  newspapers,  is 
always  too  topical  to  be  abreast  of  the  times. 
For  ever  dealing  with  what  is  ** uppermost,"  he 
neglects  what  is  underneath,  and  that  is  generally 
the  one  thing  that  matters. 

But,  above  all,  he  and  men  like  him,  wit!^  their 
brisk  way  of  disposing  of  great  questions,  tend 
to  give  a  dfsastrous  impression  that  what  they 
call  ** reform"  is  a  simple  matter,  needing  noth- 
ing but  *^ common  sense"  and  ** good- will."  Here, 
for  instance,  are  the  masters;  here  are  the  men; 


MR.  HAEOLD  BEGBIE  243 

estranged  by  superficial  quarrels:  what  is  wanted 
to  get  them  **in  touch''?  ** Good-feeling,  my  dear 
sir;  nothing  more;  men  who  have  fought  together 
in  the  trenches  are  surely  not  going,  etc.,  etc." 
It  is  what  Carlyle  called  reforming  by  **  tremen- 
dous cheers." 

**Alas,  it  cannot  be  done.  Reform  is  not  joyous, 
but  grievous;  no  single  man  can  reform  himself 
without  stern  suffering  and  stern  working;  how 
much  less  can  a  nation  of  men!  .    .   . 

**  Reforming  a  nation  is  a  terrible  business. 
Medea,  when  she  made  men  young  again,  was 
wont  to  hew  them  in  pieces  with  meat-axes, 
cast  them  into  caldrons,  and  boil  them  for  a 
length  of  time.  How  much  handier  could  they 
but  have  done  it  by  *  tremendous  cheers' 
alone ! ' ' 

A  danger  not  to  be  minimised  at  this  moment 
is  the  writer  or  politician  of  seeming  gravity  and 
essential  levity,  the  sentimentalist  who  suggests 
that  a  world  out  of  joint  can  be  put  right  by 
anything  short  of  the  severest  thought  and  the 
severest  labour.  The  mere  insignificance  of  what 
is  talked  and  written  is  no  measure  of  the  mischief 
it  may  do.  What  is  lighter  than  thistle-down, 
but  what,  too,  more  distressing  for  the  earnest 
toiler  on  the  land?  Mr.  Begbie  means  right  well 
and  no   doubt  has   his   uses.     But   with   all  his 


244  ALL  AND  SUNDEY 

*  intensely  religious  spirit,"  '^powerful  and  absorb- 
ing sermons''  in  novel  form,  and  ** realism  without 
offence,''  it  will,  I  imagine,  strike  our  successors 
as  singular  that  in  such  grave  times  he  should 
fill  so  many  columns  with— in  essence,  what! 


VISCOUNT  ESHER 

Some  years  ago  the  late  King  of  Prussia  and 
German  Emperor  described  Lord  Esher  as  a  man 
fit  to  look  after  the  drains  and  foundations  of  a 
Koyal  palace,  but  not  to  express  opinions  on  high 
policy. 

This  criticism  only  shows  that  William  11., 
despite  his  intimate  connection  with  England, 
really  knew  very  little  about  us.  The  Emperor, 
of  course,  founded  his  sneer  on  the  fact  that 
Lord  Esher  was  once  Secretary  to  His  Britannic 
Majesty's  Board  of  Works,  which,  in  fact,  is 
charged  with  the  business  of  looking  after  drains 
and  foundations  among  other  things.  Now  in 
Prussia  such  a  functionary  would  probably  be  a 
noble,  if  not  what  we  call  a  lord.  But  he  would 
be  expected  to  understand  drains  and  foundations, 
and  he  would  not  be  expected  to  talk  confidently 
about  anything  else.  In  England,  on  the  other 
hand,  as  the  German  Emperor  should  have  known 
quite  well,  an  important  position  at  the  OflSce  of 
Works  need  not  necessarily  imply  on  the  part  of 
its  holder  any  knowledge  of  drains  and  founda- 
tions. Such  knowledge  might  possibly  exist;  but 
it  would  not  be  obligatory,  and,  if  existent,  would 

245 


246  ALL  AND  SUNDEY 

either  be  concealed  or  acknowledged  with  a  blush. 
It  is  not  our  soldiers  alone  who  delight  in  mufti, 
and  are  quick  to  resent  the  suspicion  of  ^^shop.'' 
In  high  officialdom  also  the  amateur  status  is 
valued.  But  such  a  man  might  easily  be  an 
authority  on  all  sorts  of  outside  subjects,  from 
army  commands  to  old  masters,  and  might  exer- 
cise a  great,  but  ill-defined,  influence  in  more  than 
one  quarter. 

It  was,  therefore,  a  coarse  Prussian  error  to 
assume,  first,  that  Lord  Esher  knew  anything 
of  the  gross  details  of  his  ostensible  work,  and, 
secondly,  that  his  views  on  other  subjects  were 
negligible.  Lord  Esher,  in  fact,  represents  a  type 
almost  peculiar  to  this  country;  a  man  who  goes 
everywhere  and  knows  everybody,  who  is  under- 
stood to  be  important,  and  yet  has  no  recognised 
status  proportionate  to  his  prestige.  On  the  sur- 
face, he  is  nothing  in  particular.  To  be  sure, 
he  is  a  Viscount,  but  there  are  many  Viscounts, 
and  every  year  sees  more  of  them;  and  one 
really  cannot  be  impressed  by  a  Knighthood  of 
Justice  of  the  Order  of  St.  John  of  Jerusalem 
or  the  Second  Class  of  the  Spanish  Order  of 
Merit.  He  has  done  nothing  in  particular.  True, 
he  has  occupied  positions  which  might  have  been 
filled  by  quite  first-class  meur  For  example,  he 
was   Chairman  of  the  War  Office  Reconstitution 


VISCOUNT  ESHER  247 

Committee,  which  sat  in  1904,  and  he  is  a  per- 
manent member  of  the  Committee  of  Imperial  De- 
fence. But  if  you  were  to  inquire  precisely  what 
he  had  done  to  justify  selection  you  would  have 
to  be  content  with  somewhat  vague  answers.  On 
the  literary  side  we  have  rather  more  definite 
achievement.  Lord  Esher  edited  the  correspond- 
ence of  Queen  Victoria,  and  has  produced  several 
rather  slight  original  works  concerning  royalty 
and  statesmanship. 

Altogether  his  is  a  career  which,  however  useful 
and  creditable,  does  not  explain  adequately  why 
Lord  Esher  should  assume  the  character  of  a  sort 
of  unofficial  adviser  to  the  English  people.  His 
political  record  was  quite  undistinguished;  most 
people  have  forgotten  that  he  sat  for  Falmouth 
in  the  eighties,  and  was  private  secretary  to  the 
Duke  of  Devonshire.  His  connection  with  soldier- 
ing rather  suggests  Mr.  Alfred  Jingle's  participa- 
tion in  the  Revolution  of  July:  ** Fired  a  musket 
— fired  with  an  idea — rushed  into  wine-shop — wrote 
it  down — back  again — ^whizz-bang — another  idea — 
wine- shop  again — pen  and  ink — back  again — ^bang 
the  field-piece — twang  the  lyre.*'  Not  that  there 
is  anything  lyrical  about  Lord  Esher;  but  the 
flow  of  ideas  is  certainly  there,  and  they  are  re- 
ceived by  the  British  public  with  true  Pickwickian 
solemnity.    For  Lord  Esher  is  reserved  that  privi- 


248  ALL  AND  SUNDRY 

lege  only  conceded  to  the  great,  a  large-type  col- 
umn in  The  Times  whenever  he  chooses  to  claim 
it.  Leader-writers  call  attention  to  his  **  notable 
review''  of  some  ** situation"  or  other  in  an  ad- 
joining column.  The  purveyors  of  gossip  refer 
to  him  whenever  he  bobs  up,  and,  failing  to  find 
anything  very  thrilling  about  the  Viscount  per- 
sonally, trail  off  into  irrelevancies  concerning  the 
former  Miss  Zena  Dare,  his  daughter-in-law.  In 
short,  there  is  a  very  general  impression  in  many 
circles  that  Lord  Esher  is  somebody,  and  nobody 
seems  to  be  able  to  say  quite  what  sort  of  some- 
body he  is.  He  is  not  a  very  great  nobleman, 
or  a  very  great  landowner,  or  a  very  great  writer, 
or  a  very  great  anything.  But  there  seems  to 
be  a  notion  that  he  stands  for  something  much 
more  important  than  the  son  of  a  late  Master 
of  the  EoUs. 

The  present  writer  is  content  to  state  the  mys- 
tery without  trying  to  fathom  it.  Indeed,  the 
way  of  an  eagle  in  the  air  or  a  snake  on  the 
rock  is  not  more  occult.  But  a  hint  may  perhaps 
be  taken  from  a  little  book  which  Lord  Esher 
thought  it  worth  while  to  publish  some  time  ago. 
Discussing,  among  other  matters,  the  position  of 
the  Crown  in  English  life,  he  remarks  that  the 
King  is  not  a  power  but  an  influence.  Possibly 
that  is  Lord  Esher 's  own  ambition.     Possibly  he 


VISCOUNT  ESHER  249 

wishes  to  be  an  influence,  a  sort  of  atmosphere, 
a  circumambient  Esher,  so  to  speak.  If  not  great 
himself,  his  familiarity  with  the  great  is  wonder- 
ful. ^^I  have  spoken  with  every  Minister  engaged 
in  the  war,*'  he  used  to  say,  in  the  course  of 
his  criticisms,  **and  they  were  all  wrong  on  such 
and  such  a  point."  ^^At  so  and  so,"  he  remarked, 
*^I  was  told  so  and  so."  Every  communication 
of  his  to  the  Press  had  this  note  of  exclusive  and 
first-hand  information.  It  is  perhaps  permissible 
to  wonder  how  it  arrived  that  Lord  Esher  was 
the  recipient  of  so  many  confidences;  perhaps 
even  more  permissible  to  wonder  how  he  came  to 
speak  of  them  in  public.  Are  we  to  understand 
that  every  statesman  and  soldier  discussed  his 
plans  with  Lord  Esher?  Or  is  Lord  Esher 
merely  a  super-Boswell  with  larger  opportunities? 
Neither  character  seems  wholly  congruous  with 
an  official  standing  dignified,  but  not  specially 
noteworthy.  Neither  would  be  wholly  satisfactory 
from  the  public's  point  of  view.  If  Lord  Esher 
has  really  qualities  which  fit  him  to  be  an  in- 
fluence in  public  affairs,  he  might  perhaps  be 
induced  to  display  them  on  a  public  stage.  If 
he  has  no  such  qualities,  the  natural  reflection 
of  the  public  is  on  the  whole  that  of  the  ex-Kaiser. 
If  his  job  is  drains  and  foundations,  let  him  look 
after  drains  and  foundations. 


250  ALL  AND  SUNDEY 

Lord  Esher,  however,  seems  to  be  less  occupied 
with  the  material  than  with  the  moral  foundations 
of  Windsor  Castle,  and  in  the  little  book  to  which 
reference  has  been  made  he  takes  upon  himself, 
greatly  daring,  the  wholly  unnecessary  task  of 
defending  royal  institutions  in  this  country.  The 
dark  suspicion  that  his  lordship  may  be  a  furtive 
republican  crosses  the  mind  as  one  glances  over 
his  arguments  in  favour  of  monarchy.  For  they 
are  the  kind  of  arguments  of  which  the  best  causes 
die.  A  judicious  champion  would  not,  for  ex- 
ample, dwell  too  lovingly  on  the  period  when 
Baron  Stockmar  was  a  power,  or  gloat  over  Prince 
Albert  ^* toning  down''  foreign  despatches,  and 
routing  **  powerful  Ministers  and  ebullient  Par- 
liaments." More  grateful  to  modern  susceptibil- 
ities are  the  tributes  paid  to  King  Edward  and 
the  present  wearer  of  the  Crown.  But  Lord 
Esher  surely  misunderstands  the  workers  to  whom 
he  appeals  when  he  claims  that  *^an  arbiter 
elegantiarum  is  as  necessary  to  the  English  people 
as  a  conductor  to  an  orchestra."  The  English 
people  undoubtedly  have  great  respect  and  warm 
affection  for  the  Royal  Family,  and  recognise  the 
many  real  advantages  of  our  monarchical  system. 
But  the  great  mass  think  of  the  King  first  as 
the  chief  magistrate  of  the  State,  and  secondly 
as   a  human  and  lovable  figure.     He  never  fills 


VISCOUNT  ESHER  251 

their    vision    as    the    first    chapter    in    Burke's 
**  Peerage/* 

Lord  Esher,  who  **does  not  share  faith  in 
democracy  as  a  form  of  government,"  feelingly 
deprecates  the  unconsidered  sweeping  away  of 
** institutions  deeply  rooted  in  historic  soil."  He 
mentions  that  during  discussion  of  these  subjects 
with  a  working-man  friend  of  twenty-five  years' 
standing,  this  highly  favoured  proletarian  pointed 
to  an  ancient  tabard  hanging  on  the  wall,  and 
said,  **We  shall  care  for  old  historic  influences, 
as  you  care  for  that,  as  a  thing  of  beauty,  but 
obsolete."  The  whole  modem  criticism  of  the 
Peerage  is  surely  the  precise  opposite  of  this 
humble  friend's  of  Lord  Esher.  The  Peerage  is 
not  wholly  a  thing  of  beauty,  and  it  is  very  far 
from  obsolete.  Neither  the  lords  who  sell  their 
pictures  nor  the  lords  who  buy  their  titles  repre- 
sent any  splendid  but  dying  tradition;  both  are 
very  much  alive  and  not  at  all  moss-grown.  If 
there  should  be  a  popular  movement  to  get  rid 
of  institutions  for  which  Lord  Esher  pleads,  it 
would  not  be  inspired  by  any  vandalistic  passion 
against  the  harmless  and  graceful  antique.  It 
would  come  of  a  most  practical  fear  of  something 
very  new  and  very  strong,  which  aims  at  making 
the  world  safe  for  plutocracy. 


LOED  EBNLE 

It  is  stated  that  when  Mr.  Lloyd  George  was 
looking  for  a  Minister  of  Agriculture  someone 
suggested  Mr.  E.  E.  Prothero.  The  Prime  Min- 
ister's eyes  lighted  with  memories  of  the  Budget 
controversy.  **Ah!''  he  exclaimed,  *Hhe  man  I 
called  the  Duke  of  Bedford's  butler,  or  something 
of  that  sort.  The  very  person  I  want.'*  And 
thus  one  of  the  fiercest  critics  of  Mr.  Lloyd  George 
the  Chancellor  of  the  Exchequer  became  subordi- 
nate and  ally  to  Mr.  Lloyd  George  the  Prime 
Minister. 

Lord  Ernie,  as  he  now  is,  was  never  a  butler. 
Perhaps  no  man  in  politics  ever  looked  less  like 
one.  The  son  of  a  Canon,  he  has  inherited  much 
of  the  atmosphere  of  the  Establishment.  His  thin, 
finely  chiselled,  clean-shaven  face  and  white  hair 
would  go  well  with  apron  and  gaiters;  his  style 
of  speaking  embraces  equally  the  ecclesiastical 
comminatory  and  the  ecclesiastical  benedictory; 
and  when  he  approaches  his  peroration  you  are 
almost  surprised  that  he  does  not  say,  **Just  one 
word  more  before  we  part.''  Nor  is  his  churchiness 
limited  to  externals.    The  sons  of  the  clergy  are 

252 


LORD  ERNLE  253 

not  generally  noted  for  their  addiction  to  the 
paternal  **shop/'  Lord  Ernie  is  the  exception. 
His  literary  output,  to  adapt  Mr.  Micawber's 
description  of  Canterbury,  is  ^*a  happy  admixture 
of  the  ecclesiastical  and  the  agricultural.'*  He 
has  written  a  book  on  **The  Psalms  in  Human 
Life,'*  an  altogether  excellent  book,  perhaps  the 
best  on  the  subject  in  the  English  language.  He 
has  also  produced  two  works  on  Dean  Stanley, 
and  several  treatises  on  farming. 

Marlborough  was  his  school,  and  Balliol  his 
college;  he  has  been  called  to  the  Bar;  he  edited 
the  Quarterly  Review  for  five  years ;  he  has  served 
on  a  Royal  Commission,  and  had  contested  a 
Bedfordshire  constituency  before  he  became  Lord 
Hugh  Cecil's  colleague  in  the  representation  of 
Oxford  University.  To  call  a  man  with  this  record 
the  Duke  of  Bedford's  butler  is  to  carry  the  licence 
of  political  satire  to  excessive  lengths.  The  posi- 
tion Lord  Ernie  actually  occupied  was  that  of 
agent-in-chief  to  the  Duke.  It  is  not  perhaps 
altogether  easy  for  the  ordinary  man  to  under- 
stand how  a  person  of  Lord  Ernie's  many  ac- 
complishments could  accept  any  kind  of  personal 
service,  however  distinguished  his  employer.  But 
in  the  case  of  very  large  estates  the  sense  of 
personal  servitude  is  not  vivid.  Forty  thousand 
rich  English  acres  are  equivalent  to  many  a  small 


254  ALL  AND  SUNDEY 

principality,  and  the  agent-in-cMef  has  more  than 
the  emolument  and  a  part  of  the  dignity  of  some 
Prime  Ministers.  The  President  of  the  Swiss 
Eepublic,  for  example,  is  probably  a  much 
poorer  man,  and  almost  certainly  a  much  hum- 
bler man,  than  most  people  in  Lord  Ernie's  posi- 
tion. 

I  have  always  thought  there  is  too  little  sym- 
pathy for  the  young  man  who  '^went  away  sor- 
rowfully, for  he  had  great  possessions.''  It  may 
easily  have  been  true  that  the  great  possessions 
had  him;  that  they  determined  his  life  for  him, 
irrespective  of  his  private  views.  Certainly  in 
modern  times  preposterously  rich  men,  or  com- 
paratively poor  men  with  preposterously  large 
estates,  are  the  slaves  of  their  belongings.  You 
or  I  can  go  into  a  greenhouse  and  freely  cut  a 
bunch  of  grapes,  because  we  look  after  the  green- 
house ourselves,  or  at  best  employ  a  single  gar- 
dener. But  when  my  lord  of  many  millions 
wants  some  orchids,  the  twenty-first  under-gar- 
dener  touches  his  hat,  and  says  he'll  *^ mention 
it"  to  the  head-gardener,  who  in  all  probability 
will  decline  to  part  with  the  best  blooms,  which 
he  is  reserving  for  the  Horticultural  Show.  No 
man  with  more  than  a  moderate  income  can  be 
said  to  be  free.  It  is  unfair  to  regard  a  Duke 
as   an  individual.     He   is   really  a   Caste   Trust. 


LORD  ERNLE  255 

In  the  relative  insignificance  of  the  product  we 
forget  the  wonderful  extent  and  complexity  of 
the  machinery.  We  see  a  rather  clumsy  young 
man,  who  talks  halting  nonsense  in  the  House  of 
Lords  and  fluent  slang  in  the  weighing-room  at 
a  steeplechase  meeting;  who  throws  away  thou- 
sands in  gambling  and  deducts  five  shillings  from 
the  allowance  of  some  old  servant  who  has  reached 
his  seventieth  birthday  and  his  old  age  pension; 
who  gives  a  dinner  party  at  which  **the  flowers 
alone  ran  into  four  figures,''  and  defies  the  defer- 
ent suggestion  of  a  sanitary  authority  that  he 
should  abate  the  indecency  of  his  slum  property 
— ^we  note  all  this,  and  marvel  at  the  inconsistency 
of  ducal  nature.  The  Duke  may  quite  possibly 
prefer  a  chop  to  a  French  dinner,  delight  in  fling- 
ing away  money  in  miscellaneous  largesse,  and  be 
a  liberal  patron  of  some  charity  for  the  support 
of  decayed  footmen.  But  the  Duke  is  generally 
the  least  important  fact  about  the  duk-edom.  It 
is  forgotten  that  behind  the  individual,  sometimes 
very  human  and  very  foolish,  is  something  very 
astute  and  occasionally  very  inhuman,  a  kind  of 
small  county  council,  with  a  whole  hierarchy  of 
lawyers,  rent-collectors,  and  agents,  as  cold  as 
civil  servants,  and  generally  much  keener.  It 
was  such  a  hierarchy  of  which  Lord  Ernie  was 
the  head. 


256  ALL  AND  SUNDEY 

On  the  face  of  things  the  appointment  of  this 
scholarly  man  was  a  good  one.  He  knew  a  great 
deal  about  land,  was  an  excellent  judge  of  a 
certain  kind  of  good  farming,  and  might  well 
appear  supremely  qualified  for  the  difficult  and 
delicate  task  of  restoring  British  agriculture  to 
something  like  its  old  position  in  the  national 
economy.  Unfortunately  the  Prime  Minister  made 
no  allowance  for  two  facts.  In  the  first  place, 
Lord  Ernie  had  been  long  associated  with  a  par- 
ticular interest.  He  was  a  landlords'  man,  think- 
ing in  the  terms  of  landlordism,  and  personally, 
as  well  as  professionally,  inclined  to  the  land- 
lords' rather  contemptuous  and  sceptical  view  of 
any  system  of  culture  opposed  to  the  tradition  of 
the  last  few  hundred  years.  Secondly,  he  was 
above  everything  a  pessimist;  pessimism  was  the 
very  stuff  of  him.  We  all  know  the  expert  who 
labours  with  great  acuteness  and  conviction  to 
prove  that  things  cannot  be  done,  and  is  rather 
disappointed  when  they  are  done  in  the  face  of 
his  advice.  Lord  Ernie  was  precisely  that  kind 
of  expert.  Overborne  here  by  circumstances,  there 
by  the  will  of  his  chief,  he  yet  hugged  (as  if  it 
were  something  precious)  the  assurance  that  grim 
experience  would  at  long  last  confound  all  the 
sanguine  expectations  of  the  enthusiasts  for  food 
production.     Not  that  Lord  Ernie  was  unsympa- 


LORD  ERNLE  257 

thetic.  His  sympathies,  if  anything,  were  too  ex- 
tensive and  too  readily  engaged.  He  sympathised 
with  the  nobleman  whose  park  it  might  be  pro- 
posed to  plough  up.  He  sympathised  with  the 
farmer  who  found  difficulty  with  the  controller, 
and  with  the  controller  who  found  difficulty  with 
the  farmer.  He  left  everybody  with  whom  he 
came  in  contact  under  the  impression  that  their 
troubles  were  his  single  preoccupation,  and  that 
life  must  continue  bitter  to  him  until  these  troubles 
were  relieved. 

But  sympathy  that  knows  no  end  also  knows  no 
very  practical  beginning;  if,  like  Mother  Nature, 
one  sympathises  equally  with  the  wolf  and  the 
lamb,  the  lamb  will  not  feel  any  excessive  grati- 
tude: it  is  more  likely  to  feel  simultaneously  the 
wolf's  teeth  and  the  satire  of  such  sympathy.  It 
is  not  surprising,  therefore,  that  Lord  Ernie,  after 
a  time,  failed  both  to  satisfy  the  Do-Nothings 
and  to  win  the  confidence  of  the  Do- Somethings. 
Something,  however,  was  done,  despite  all;  Lord 
Ernie  was  at  the  head  of  the  Board  while  it  was 
done;  and  nobody  is  likely  to  grudge  him  the 
peerage  he  richly  earned,  if  only  by  suffering 
for  many  months  an  excessive  lowness  of  spirits. 
Running  with  the  hare  and  hunting  with  the 
hounds  is,  after  all,  a  depressing  as  well  as  an 
exhausting   form   of   sport,   and   Lord  Ernie   did 


258  ALL  AND  SUNDRY 

well,  at  his  time  of  life,  to  give  it  up.  There 
must  always  be  an  unwholesome  strain  on  a  Duke 's 
agent  placed  in  charge  of  a  ^*  democratic  *'  land 
settlement  policy. 


Sm  DONALD  MACLEAN  AND 
MR.  ADAMSON 

Fate  is  an  artist,  as  finished  in  the  satiric  as  in 
the  tragic  vein,  and  nothing  could  be  better  in 
its  way  than  her  Swift-like  lampoon  on  what 
Mr.  Balfour,  in  one  of  his  moments  of  detachment, 
described  as  the  organised  quarrel  of  British  party 
politics. 

Electoral  chance,  by  dividing  the  honours  of 
the  Opposition  leadership  between  Sir  Donald 
MacLean  and  Mr.  William  Adamson,  has  accom- 
plished more  than  years  of  elaborate  discussion 
could  have  brought  about.  The  whole  business  is 
simply  made  ridiculous  by  a  reduction  of  scale; 
it  is  Lilliput  plagiarised  by  circumstances.  The 
football  match  of  Ins  and  Outs  was  perhaps  no 
less  silly  ten  years  ago  than  it  is  to-day.  But 
it  looked  less  silly.  Eeal  football  becomes  more 
than  a  game,  it  becomes  a  business  of  quite  owlish 
gravity,  when  great  players  contest  before  great 
** gates,"  with  the  megaphone  of  the  Press  pro- 
claiming how  important  the  whole  business  is.  So 
it  was  with  Front  Bench  and  Front  Opposition 
Bench  in  the  days  before  the  Flood.  It  was  not 
all  play-acting,  of  course,  but  a  great  deal  of  it 


260  ALL  AND  SUNDRY 

was.  The  Leader  of  the  Opposition  did  not  really 
believe  that  the  Chancellor  of  the  Exchequer  was 
a  financial  Attila,  but  he  thought  it  a  neat  thing 
to  say,  and  said  it.  What  he  really  meant  was 
that  certain  wealthy  contributors  to  the  funds 
of  his  party  thought  a  particular  tax  extremely 
unpleasant.  And  when  a  great  orator  on  the 
other  side  declared  that  the  Bill  in  his  charge 
aimed  at  freeing  ^* democracy''  for  ever  from  the 
shackles  of  feudalism  he  had  no  very  clear  idea 
of  what  feudalism  was,  or  democracy,  or  freedom. 
But  he  had  a  very  clear  idea  of  how  things  of  that 
kind  would  read  in  the  popular  papers  the  next 
day,  and  how  they  would  be  quoted  on  by-election 
platforms  next  week. 

Given  a  cheering  mob  of  members  after  dinner, 
given  a  stirring  set  of  Front  Bench  speeches  in 
which  at  least  the  element  of  personal  rivalry  is 
very  real,  given,  further,  the  forty-five  millions  of 
Carlyle's  majority  in  the  background,  this  sort 
of  game  has  its  own  impressiveness.  One  might 
have  a  private  opinion  of  the  futility  of  the  busi- 
ness, and  yet,  watching  the  wind-up  of  a  ** great" 
debate,  with  its  atmosphere  of  tense  excitement, 
one  had  to  be  strong-minded  indeed  to  resist  the 
general  illusion  that  government  must  be  carried 
on  this  way  and  not  otherwise.  But  now  people 
who  stray  into  the  House  of  Commons,  and  people 


MACLEAN  AND  ADAMSON  261 

who  read  debates  in  the  papers,  see  the  party 
game  as  not  even  a  game:  it  is  only  a  joke,  and 
a  feeble  one  at  that.  For  the  whole  merit  of 
the  old  Parliamentary  game  lay  in  the  skill  of 
the  chief  players  and  the  comparative  equality 
of  the  opposing  teams.  Now  the  players  are  at 
best  mediocre,  and  one  famous  team  is  repre- 
sented by  a  few  disconsolate  survivors.  Sir  Donald 
MacLean  leads  a  handful  of  Liberals  starving  for 
principle  (and  very  cross  about  it) ;  Mr.  Adam- 
son  a  larger  body  of  Labour  men  ravening  for 
interest.  The  Independent  Liberal  party  is  a 
noun  of  multitude  signifying  not  many,  and  Will- 
iam Adamson  is  a  quite  proper  noun  signifying 
not  much.  Only  one  touch  was  needed  to  com- 
plete the  farce  of  Opposition  on  party  lines  in 
a  Parliament  elected  on  a  negation  of  party;  and 
that  touch  was,  happily,  not  wanting.  The  mo- 
ment the  time  came  for  the  official  Opposition  to 
say  the  great  question  was  precipitated — which 
was  the  official  Opposition?  Was  it  a  question 
of  numbers  or  of  quality?  Up  rose  Sir  Donald 
MacLean  and  Mr.  Adamson,  with  a  click,  for  all 
the  world  like  the  little  things  on  a  whist-marker 
(save  that  they  erected  themselves  to  score  points 
not  yet  made),  the  one  claiming  precedence  be- 
cause he  represented  what  Liberalism  had  been, 
the  other  because  he  stood  for  what  Labour  hoped 


262  ALL  AND  SUNDRY 

to  be.  This  little  problem  of  etiquette  has  been, 
happily,  settled  by  the  Speaker  in  a  Solomonic 
judgment;  the  lawyer  knight  and  the  Lanark 
miner  exercise  in  turns  the  privileges  of  Leader 
of  the  Opposition :  rather  after  the  fashion  of  those 
old  German  clocks  where  the  little  man  comes 
out  to-day  and  the  little  woman  to-morrow. 

On  the  whole,  the  position  of  Sir  Donald 
MacLean  is  the  less  enviable.  Like  those  faithful 
knights  who  were  dressed  up  as  the  King  for  the 
sole  purpose  of  being  killed  in  his  stead,  he  has 
the  pang  without  the  crown  of  the  martyr.  A 
fugitive  Alfred  is  melancholy  enough;  but  he  is 
still  the  King  if  he  can  only  get  back  his  kingdom. 
But  in  the  ears  of  Sir  Donald  every  gust  of  the 
wind  of  adversity  whistles  Sic  vos  non  vohis.  In 
such  circumstances  he  does  manfully  enough.  It 
must  be  admitted  that,  granting  the  thing  to  be 
worth  doing,  he  does  it  (to  use  the  cautious  idiom 
of  his  countrymen)  not  so  badly.  But  then  Sir 
Donald  is  far  too  Scottish  to  do  anything  badly 
— perhaps  too  Scottish  also  to  do  any  one  thing 
supremely  well.  He  is  Scottiest  of  Scots;  did 
not  his  father  come  from  the  still-vexed  Hebrides! 
He  is  also  a  solicitor  high  in  repute  in  Cardiff. 
The  combination  is  fatal  to  inefficiency,  and  Sir 
Donald  has  shown  himself  efficient  in  everything 
he  has  handled.     As  Chairman  of  the  Final  Ap- 


MACLEAN  AND  ADAMSON  263 

peal  Tribunal  he  nearly  touched  perfection :  pains- 
taking and  just,  human  without  blubber,  and  feel- 
ing without  sickliness,  he  won  general  respect 
and  confidence  as  holding  a  sane  balance  between 
the  rights  of  the  citizen  and  the  claims  of  the 
State.  As  Deputy-Chairman  of  Committee  he 
knows  the  House  to  the  bottom,  and  has  the 
stoicism,  no  doubt  painfully  acquired,  that  shrinks 
from  no  extremity  of  boredom.  In  that  he  has 
an  advantage  over  his  exiled  chief;  Mr.  Asquith 
came  to  speak,  and,  if  he  remained,  did  so  only 
to  scoff.  Sir  Donald's  handsome  presence  helps 
him,  too;  he  is  one  of  those  pleasantly  stately, 
fresh,  clean-shaven  men  who  look  all  their  age 
in  dignity  and  all  their  carefully  preserved  youth 
in  alertness. 

Mr.  Adamson  is  also  very  Scottish  in  many 
ways:  in  his  wounding  accent,  for  example,  and 
his  unwillingness  to  give  himself  away,  which  is 
perhaps  fortunate,  since  there  is  in  some  respects 
not  enough  of  him  to  be  lavish  with.  He  is  prob- 
ably better  in  counsel  than  in  speech;  his  set 
orations  smell  much  of  the  midnight  oil,  and  his 
incursions  into  the  classic  suggest  rather  the  mis- 
cellaneous loot  of  a  moss-trooper  than  the  lawful 
possessions  of  a  peaceful  cultivator.  Like  that 
countryman  of  his  who  refused  gold  (it  was  a 
very  long  time  ago),  demanding  ** white  money'' 


264  ALL  AND  SUNDRY 

that  anybody  would  take,  he  seems  to  know  no 
distinction  between  the  highest  and  lowest  in 
intellectual  currency.  In  one  of  his  most  deeply 
meditated  speeches  he  quoted  Mr.  Bryan's  ^* Man- 
kind must  not  be  crucified  on  a  cross  of  gold'* 
much  as  if  it  were  part  of  the  Sermon  on  the 
Mount,  whereas  in  fact  it  was  merely  a  flying 
spark  struck  out  of  a  now  forgotten  controversy 
in  the  United  States ;  a  thing  as  transient  and  local 
as  could  well  be. 

Lack  of  proportion  is,  indeed,  a  general  fault 
of  Mr.  Adamson.  He  divides  the  nation  too  sharply 
into  two  classes:  miners  and  people  not  worth 
considering  (except  for  income  tax  and  expro- 
priation purposes).  It  is  carrying  simplification 
to  extremes.  After  all  there  were  others  who 
have  done  things,  as  the  shade  of  Noah  is  alleged 
to  have  remarked  to  a  newly  arrived  American 
ghost,  who  boasted  that  in  the  great  Mississippi 
floods  of  1903  he  went  out  on  a  raft  and  saved 
twenty-three  lives. 


LORD  ROBERT  CECIL 

In  a  former  volume,  compiled  at  a  time  when 
the  cult  of  the  business  man  was  at  its  height, 
I  expressed  some  doubt  as  to  the  political  com- 
petence of  most  of  Mr.  Lloyd  George's  recruits 
and  ventured  the  remark  that  of  all  the  new  men 
in  the  Government  Lord  Robert  Cecil  was  the 
only  one  to  suggest  large  possibilities. 

The  business  men  have  since  mostly  disappeared. 
The  moment  they  left  the  Government  they  were 
forgotten;  it  would  be  hard,  at  this  time,  to 
recall  even  the  names  of  most  of  the  strong, 
silent  imitators  of  Cincinnatus  who  left  their  cash 
registers  to  save  their  country.  Lord  Robert 
Cecil,  on  the  other  hand,  is  a  much  more  notable 
figure  out  of  office  than  in.  During  the  hustle 
of  the  war  most  of  his  colleagues  were  far  too 
rich  to  do  him  reverence;  and  he  himself  only 
very  imperfectly  understood  the  uses  of  advertise- 
ment. He  did  his  job,  and  did  it  well;  if  not 
actually  indispensable,  he  could  hardly  be  dis- 
pensed with  while  it  lasted.  Thus  he  survived 
all  changes  in  the  two  Coalitions,  and  gained  in- 
creasing respect  in  a  small  but  influential  circle, 
but  was  never  popularly  suspected  of  having  won 

265 


266  ALL  AND  SUNDEY 

the  war,  or  even  any  considerable  part  of  it. 
When  he  resigned  his  office,  on  the  rather  remote 
issue  of  the  Welsh  Church,  Sir  Leo  Chiozza  Money 
also  found  it  impossible  (on  quite  other  grounds) 
to  support  the  reconstituted  Coalition.  The  one 
secession  was  received  almost  as  calmly  as  the 
other:  Lord  Eobert  was  known  to  be  faddy  on 
Church  questions,  and  in  any  case  what  did  it 
matter?  Mr.  Bonar  Law  stood  where  he  did. 
Mr.  Long  was  as  willing  as  Barkis.  The  dreadful 
possibility  that  Mr.  Hayes  Fisher  might  create 
a  schism  had  been  successfully  met.  With  these 
substantial  supports  in  place,  so  slender  a  party 
pillar  as  Lord  Eobert  was  clearly  dispensable. 

In  another  sense,  however.  Lord  Eobert  was 
less  easily  to  be  spared.  The  public  soon  learned 
that,  though  not  a  Minister,  he  was  to  take  part 
in  the  Peace  Conference,  and  after  a  while  it 
began  to  realise  that  a  politician  had  quietly 
developed  into  a  statesman.  The  miracle  was  not 
announced  in  Sinaitic  thunders  and  lightnings,  but 
every  well-informed  person  who  returned  from 
Paris  spoke  of  the  solid  work  Lord  Eobert  was 
doing,  and  attributed  mainly  to  him  the  rapidity 
with  which  the  League  of  Nations  was  being 
converted  from  a  loose  phrase  to  a  coherent  entity. 
It  was  whispered  that,  if  President  Wilson  could 
claim   the   honour   of   parentage,   the   labours   of 


LORD  ROBERT  CECIL  267 

nursing  the  baby  devolved  on  others,  and  chiefly 
on  the  British  delegation.  Lord  Robert  Cecils 
work,  done  almost  in  stealth,  has  now  found  some 
degree  of  fame.  It  has  been  acknowledged  by 
the  Prime  Minister.  It  has  been  warmly  ap- 
plauded by  the  leaders  of  the  Labour  party.  It 
has  even  drawn  upon  its  author  that  kind  of 
opprobrium  which  is  the  most  sincere  form  of 
compliment.  Lord  Robert  has  been  publicly  de- 
nounced as  a  ** traitor'*  by  the  same  people  who 
regard  Mr.  Bottomley  as  an  inspired  prophet. 

It  is  permissible  to  hope  that  Lord  Robert  has 
now  definitely  emerged  from  the  tadpole  stage 
in  which  his  gifted  brother  (as  well  as  a  brother 
less  gifted)  still  lingers.  Of  his  ability  there 
was  never  any  question;  of  his  honesty  there  was 
even  less;  his  sense  of  proportion  was  (and  per- 
haps is  still)  more  doubtful.  I  do  not  refer  here 
to  that  attachment  to  the  Church  which  many  find 
merely  bigoted  and  obstructionist.  True,  it  is 
difficult  to  treat  with  serious  respect  some  of  the 
methods  the  Cecil  brothers  have  adopted  in  de- 
fence of  the  threatened  ark;  it  might  be  as  logical, 
for  the  sake  of  the  holy  mysteries,  to  linger  in 
the  lobby  as  to  be  eaten  by  lions,  but  it  cannot 
be  said  to  be  equally  impressive.  Still,  faith  of 
any  kind  is  respectable,  and  honesty  is  not  so 
common  in  politics   that  we   can   afford   to  pick 


268  ALL  AND  SUNDEY 

and  choose  according  to  our  exact  taste.  The 
Cecil  attitude  to  Church  questions  is  by  no  means 
negligible.  It  is,  indeed,  of  enormous  importance, 
as  definitely  excluding  Lord  Kobert  from  devel- 
opment on  certain  lines  which  otherwise  he  might 
possibly  have  followed.  But  it  cannot  be  profitably 
discussed;  one  might  as  well  indulge  in  specula- 
tion as  to  what  would  happen  if  there  were  no 
force  of  gravitation. 

Of  more  practical  interest  is  the  question  how 
far  the  traditional  Toryism  of  the  Cecils  in  other 
matters  has  been  modified  in  Lord  Kobert  by 
experiences  of  the  last  few  years.  The  larger 
horizon,  clearly,  he  surveys  more  in  the  spirit 
of  his  ancestor  Burleigh  than  of  the  great  Vic- 
torian statesman,  his  father.  He  is,  like  the  Eliz- 
abethan, all  for  caution;  more  conscious  of  the 
perils  than  the  glories  of  foreign  adventure.  As 
a  statesman  he  sees  the  futility  of  arrangements 
founded  on  mere  force;  as  a  Christian  he  rejects 
the  ** jungle  theory"  of  international  relations; 
as  a  man  of  sense  he  rebels  against  that  new 
fashion  of  secular  Calvinism  which  assumes  that 
war  is  the  resultant  of  forces  independent  of  the 
human  will;  as  a  lawyer  he  is  convinced  of  the 
real  importance  of  getting  nations,  like  individuals, 
to  recognise  (even  if  they  do  not  always  obey) 
another  law  than  that  of  might.    His  faith  in  the 


LORD  ROBERT  CECIL  269 

League  of  Nations  is  not  that  of  the  sentimentalist 
who  believes  that  a  lifelong  reprobate  is  to  be 
** converted''  by  a  tract;  it  is  that  of  the  quite 
practical  man  who  knows  that  the  average  of  man- 
kind do  roughly  what  is  expected  of  them;  that 
if  the  point  of  honour  is  assault  and  battery  on 
the  smallest  provocation,  then  assaults  will  be 
frequent;  but  that  if,  on  the  other  hand,  violence 
without  great  justification  is  generally  condemned, 
manners  will  inevitably  grow  milder.  The  extraor- 
dinarily rapid  extinction  of  duelling  in  England 
is  a  case  in  point.  It  followed  immediately  on 
the  entrance  of  the  middle  classes  into  political 
power.  It  was  a  serious  nuisance  to  people  of 
Mr.  Winkle's  condition  to  be  called  out  for  a 
speech  or  an  interjection  in  the  House  of  Com- 
mons; and  as  people  of  Mr.  Winkle's  condition 
became  dominant  they  established  the  convention 
that  duelling  was  equally  wicked  and  ridiculous. 
Within  twenty  years  this  convention  had  far  more 
than  the  force  of  law,  and  none  adhered  to  it 
with  more  fidelity  than  those  very  classes  which 
once  supplied  all  the  fire-eaters.  Lord  Robert 
Cecil  relies  on  a  similar  but  wider  modification 
of  public  opinion  to  effect  what  so  many  previous 
attempts  have  failed  to  achieve,  largely  because 
the  persons  most  responsible  for  making  wars 
were  not  those  who  felt  their  worst  effects. 


270  ALL  AND  SUNDRY 

Such  a  faith  and  such  a  philosophy  in  regard 
to  international  affairs  would  obviously  tend,  if 
Lord  Robert  Cecil  ultimately  attained  the  leader- 
ship of  the  Conservative  party,  to  rid  it  of  the 
suspicion  of  Jingoism,  while  in  no  way  affecting 
its  traditional  enthusiasm  for  the  development  of 
Greater  Britain.  Such  a  party  would  probably  be 
better  fitted  than  any  existing  combination  to 
deal  with  the  very  delicate  questions  which  must 
arise  in  the  new  Lnperial  integration  which  far- 
sighted  men  see  to  be  inevitable.  In  domestic 
politics  also  Lord  Robert  Cecil  gives  hints  of  a 
spirit  more  hopeful  than  that  of  latter-day  Con- 
servatism. It  is  significant  that,  while  few  men 
have  truckled  less  to  Labour,  few  enjoy  more 
fully  the  respect  of  the  more  responsible  repre- 
sentatives of  the  working  classes.  They  respect 
his  honesty,  they  admire  his  capacity,  and  they 
feel  his  sympathy  with  their  class  is  the  more 
likely  to  be  genuine  because  he  does  not  pretend 
to  be  other  than  he  is.  In  the  long  run  the  man 
to  win  most  influence  with  the  common  people 
of  England  is  he  who  tells  them  no  lies,  and  is 
ready  even  to  accuse  them  when  they  lie.  Such 
influence  is  within  the  reach  of  Lord  Robert 
Cecil  if  he  does  not  allow  independence  to  de- 
generate into  irresponsibility,  or  honest  conviction 
into  mere  bigotry. 


MR.  SPEAKER 

A  SOBT  of  Providence  seems  to  watch  over  the 
House  of  Commons  in  the  matter  of  electing  a 
Speaker.  By  the  nature  of  things  the  man  it 
elevates  to  the  Chair  is  seldom  one  who  has 
made  any  great  mark  in  the  House.  The  choice 
is  limited  to  partisans.  There  is  no  sort  of  guar- 
antee that  the  kind  of  man  likely  to  be  chosen 
for  his  knowledge  of  the  ways  of  the  House  and 
his  interest  in  precedent  and  punctilio  will  also 
develop  what  is  most  necessary  in  the  Speaker- 
ship, strength  of  character  and  that  curious  ability 
to  create  an  atmosphere  which  is  the  gift  of  many 
conunonplace  men,  and  is  denied  to  many  men  of 
the  very  highest  talent. 

It  is  that  quality  mainly  which  distinguishes  the 
successful  from  the  unsuccessful  schoolmaster,  and 
the  specially  strong  from  the  merely  learned  judge. 
Mr.  Speaker  is  a  schoolmaster  without  the  ad- 
vantage of  superior  age  and  the  power  of  the 
switch;  he  is  a  judge  whose  sentences  have  little 
more  than  moral  terrors.  A  more  than  usual 
degree  of  the  mysterious  power  to  impress  with- 
out self-assertion  is,  therefore,  essential  to  him. 
It  is  not  so  much  a  question  of  personality  as 

271 


272  ALL  AND  SUNDRY 

of  the  absence  of  it.  The  best  Speaker  is  he 
who  makes  himself  simply  the  Chair,  who  is  as 
inuch  a  part  of  the  furniture  of  the  House  as 
the  Mace  and  the  despatch  boxes,  and  is  accepted 
as  unquestioningly  as  they  are.  A  Speaker  of 
vivid  character  would  almost  certainly  be  a  very 
bad  Speaker.  But  at  the  same  time  the  post 
demands  mental  qualities  of  a  considerable  kind, 
great  alertness,  sagacity,  subtlety,  the  power  of 
quick  decision  on  all  sorts  of  knotty  points,  the 
power  also  of  stating  complicated  propositions  in 
lucid  and  convincing  form.  The  possibilities  of  a 
mistaken  choice  are  so  great  that  it  is  surprising 
that  on  the  whole  the  Commons  choose  their  man 
so  well. 

Mr.  James  William  Lowther,  by  common  ac- 
knowledgment, has  amply  justified  the  confidence 
reposed  in  his  qualities  fourteen  years  ago.  There 
is  no  subject  on  which  the  faithful  Commons 
are  so  unanimous  as  on  the  merits  of  Mr.  Speaker. 
They  have  a  most  composite  and  complete  admira- 
tion for  him.  They  take  delight  in  his  dignified 
bearing  and  the  handsome  appearance  he  makes 
in  a  full-bottomed  wig;  it  is  the  sort  of  pleasure 
one  gets  from  seeing  a  fine  piece  of  Chippendale 
or  a  Velasquez  portrait  in  the  right  sort  of  room. 
They  respect  him  for  his  strong  English  common 
sense,  which  seldom  or  never  deserts  him.    They 


ME.  SPEAKER  273 

marvel  at  his  impartiality;  of  course,  the  very 
essence  of  the  business  is  to  be  free  from  bias, 
but  impartiality  such  as  that  shown  by  Mr. 
Lowther  is  extremely  rare.  And,  finally,  they 
have  much  regard  for  him  as  a  man,  and  as  the 
diffuser  of  a  sort  of  impersonal  pleasantness  which 
goes  very  far  on  occasion  to  disperse  storm  clouds. 
The  Speaker  is  a  kindly  despot,  and  has  the 
redeeming  virtue  of  all  despots,  kindly  or  other- 
wise, that  he  is  no  respecter  of  persons  as  persons ; 
his  respect  for  them  as  institutions  is,  perhaps, 
another  question.  He  will  rule  against  the  gods 
of  the  Treasury  Bench,  when  they  offend  against 
technicalities,  as  readily  as  against  Mr.  King  or 
Mr.  Pemberton  Billing.  He  is  perfectly  fair  and 
courteous  to  those  whose  opinions  he  must  per- 
sonally detest,  and  no  absolute  monarch  was  ever 
so  indifferent  to  the  claims  of  mere  rank  and 
wealth.  Again  it  may  be  said  that  it  is  the 
business  of  a  Speaker  to  care  for  none  of  these 
things;  but  there  have  been,  in  fact.  Speakers 
more  than  suspected  of  being  far  from  indifferent 
to  great  money  and  social  status.  In  Mr.  Lowther 's 
case  the  perfect  confidence  of  the  Labour  wing 
is  perhaps  the  most  remarkable  testimony  to  his 
official  superiority  to  any  class  feeling.  Labour 
members  know  perfectly  well  that  on  most  sub- 
jects  he   must   heartily   loathe   their    sentiments, 


274i  ALL  AND  SUNDRY 

but  they  know  also  that  they  always  get  perfect 
justice  at  his  hands.  Justice,  but  no  more;  there 
is  favour  for  none.  Once  the  boundary  between 
order  and  disorder  is  passed,  the  rebuke,  good- 
natured  if  possible,  stern  if  necessary,  follows 
automatically,  be  the  offender  a  member  of  three 
months'  or  thirty  years'  standing.  Mr.  Speaker 
is  extremely  ready  with  his  discipline;  perhaps 
the  fact  that  he  is  a  fine  swordsman  explains  the 
rapidity  of  his  strokes  and  the  sureness  with 
which  he  pinks  a  fallacy  or  cuts  down  an  irrelevant 
bore. 

Heredity  no  doubt  counts  for  much  in  Mr. 
Lowther's  perfect  manifestation  of  the  Parlia- 
mentary spirit.  The  Lowthers  were  Parliamen- 
tarians long  before  the  Cavendishes  and  Cecils. 
One  sat  in  the  Parliament  of  1305,  and,  as 
Macaulay  says,  *Hhe  representation  of  Westmor- 
land was  almost  as  much  one  of  the  hereditaments 
of  the  Lowther  family  as  Lowther  Hall."  The 
qualities  of  the  race  have  not  greatly  varied  from 
one  generation  to  another,  and  there  is  in  the 
present  Speaker  much  of  the  John  Lowther  who 
became  first  Earl  of  Lonsdale  just  after  the  Rev- 
olution. The  Stuart  statesman's  portrait  reveals 
the  same  handsome  and  marked  profile.  His  abil- 
ities, we  are  told,  were  respectable;  his  time  was 
divided  between  respectable  labours  and  respecta- 


MR.  SPEAKER  275 

ble  pleasures;  and,  like  Mr.  Speaker,  he  was  pas- 
sionately devoted  to  his  garden.  On  the  whole 
it  is  a  solid,  shrewd,  quarter-sessions  kind  of  mind 
that  runs  through  the  Lowthers;  they  are  mod- 
erate, practical  men,  not  in  the  least  brilliant; 
well  satisfied  to  let  things  remain  as  they  are, 
but  by  no  means  blind  to  the  necessity  of  occa- 
sional change.  It  is  a  mind  not  to  be  despised, 
but  perhaps  the  chief  weakness  of  our  political 
system  is  that  it  has  been  over-rated  at  the  expense 
of  elements  that  also  have  their  due  value. 

It  is  this  fundamental  conservatism,  perhaps, 
which  permits  of  the  only  criticism  which  may 
be  preferred  against  Mr.  Lowther's  conduct  of 
the  Chair.  His  impartiality  as  regards  persons 
is  astonishing;  but  he  is  perhaps  a  little  too  prone 
to  favour  institutions.  And  one  rapidly  con- 
solidating institution  is  the  divine  right  of  Min- 
isters. 

Mr.  Speaker,  for  example,  has  occasionally  shown 
a  tendency  to  discourage  questions  dealing  with 
the  private  business  interests  of  Ministers:  a 
matter  surely  of  immense  importance  in  these 
days  of  the  enthroned  business  man.  It  may  be 
painful  to  men  in  public  service  to  have  it  sug- 
gested that  their  public  acts  may  be  affected  by 
their  investments,  but  is  it  not  better  that  a 
hundred  malicious  and  unfounded  attacks  should 


276  ALL  AND  SUNDRY 

be  made  than  that  a  jealous  vigilance  should  be 
in  any  degree  relaxed?  Every  year  sees  further 
limitation  of  criticism  outside  the  House  of  Com- 
mons; our  absurd  law  of  libel,  absurdly  inter- 
preted, makes  really  searching  newspaper  criticism 
extremely  dangerous,  while  at  the  same  time  the 
independence  of  the  Press  is  impaired  through  a 
hundred  subtle  influences;  and  in  these  circum- 
stances the  constantly  increasing  invasion  of  the 
old  liberties  of  question,  time  is  rather  a  serious 
matter. 

It  may  be  only  the  natural  growth  of  tendency, 
but  the  fact  is  possibly  in  some  degree  connected 
with  the  same  general  latitude  of  the  Speaker, 
that  during  his  reign  the  Parliamentary  machine 
has  become  more  and  more  machine-like.  The 
suppression  of  the  private  member  as  a  force  has 
gone  on  continuously  during  these  last  thirteen 
years.  The  Speaker's  eye  has  more  and  more 
narrowed  its  range  to  the  small  number  of  persons 
whom  the  Whips  deem  worthy  to  **get  on  their 
legs."  The  attendance  on  all  bflt  great  occa- 
sions has  grown  thinner  and  thinner.  The  man 
with  a  purpose  has  felt  more  crushed  than  ever 
before  with  the  sense  of  his  helplessness  in  face 
of  the  great  mill.  The  man  with  a  purpose  is 
doubtless  a  bore;  can  he  possibly  be  a  greater 
bore   than  the  Minister  who  chops  anew  thrice- 


MR.  SPEAKER  277 

chopped  straw?  It  is  not  Mr.  Speaker's  fault 
that  the  House  of  Commons  is  anaesthetised  by 
rules  he  had  no  part  in  making;  but  it  must  be 
confessed  that  he  is  a  first-class  practitioner  with 
the   chloroform  bottle. 

In  brief,  Mr.  Lowther  is  perhaps  as  good  a 
Speaker  as  the  House  of  Commons  could  have, 
the  House  of  Commons  being  what  it  is.  But 
what  if  the  House  of  Commons  were  the  real 
talking-shop  of  the  nation,  discussing  things  the 
nation  wants  discussed  and  Ministers  want  ignored  ? 
Well,  the  job  would  not  be  an  enviable  one  for 
anybody,  and  certainly  no  man  made  in  Mr. 
Lowther 's  image  would  dream  of  taking  it. 


THE  GERMAN  IN  PEACE 

Many  students  of  the  German  people  always  de- 
clared that  they  would  prove  as  submissive  in 
final  defeat  as  they  were  arrogant  in  early  vic- 
tory. This  view  has  been  largely  justified  by 
events.  So  long  as  bluff  promised  results,  the 
German  bluffed.  He  vowed  he  would  never  accept 
what  he  called  a  peace  of  violence.  He  threat- 
ened that,  if  hard  pressed,  he  would  thaw  and 
resolve  himself  into  the  dew  of  Bolshevism.  He 
uttered  menaces  of  vengeance  unspeakable  here- 
after. But  when  no  better  could  be,  he  signed 
the  Peace  Treaty,  and  responsible  German  states- 
men lay  stress  on  their  intention  to  observe  it. 
They  even  talk  with  a  singular  humility  about 
their  ambition  to  recover  the  good  opinion  of  the 
outside  world  by  hard  work  and  honest  policy. 

Assuredly  it  would  be  foolish  to  accept  such 
professions  without  question,  but  we  may  be  mak- 
ing as  coarse  a  mistake  if  we  assume  them  to 
come  of  conscious  hypocrisy.  We  shall  misjudge 
the  German  now,  as  we  misjudged  him  before 
the  war,  if  we  allow  our  vision  to  be  distorted 
by  prejudice.  Five  years  ago  we  were  under  the 
dominion    of    a    curious    illusion.      Most    people 

278 


THE  GERMAN  IN  PEACE  279 

accepted  the  fashionable  pseudo-scientific  view  that 
the  Englishman  was  only  a  variety  of  German, 
and  that  the  two  national  characters  were  funda- 
mentally similar.  It  is  not  necessary  here  to  delve 
into  the  origins  of  this  superstition;  the  cant  is 
fairly  modern;  Shakespeare,  while  very  sure  that 
he  was  English,  had  no  notion  of  being  Anglo- 
Saxon,  Teutonic,  or  dolichocephalic.  A  conse- 
quence of  the  easy  and,  indeed,  almost  rapturous 
acceptance  of  German  pedantry  on  this  subject 
was  that  the  German  was  never  seen  in  a  dry 
light.  Those  who  liked  and  trusted  him,  and 
those  who  both  distrusted  and  disliked,  agreed 
in  one  respect:  each  looked  on  him  as  a  sort 
of  Englishman.  The  matter  may  be  roughly  sum- 
marised by  saying  that  the  Liberal  regarded  Beth- 
mann-Hollweg  as  a  German  Asquith  and  the  Con- 
servative thought  of  Tirpitz  as  a  German  Nelson. 
This  fallacy  was  the  parent  of  many  misconcep- 
tions. It  is  possible  that  mistakes  as  gross  will 
arise  from  the  assumption  that  in  defeat  the 
German  will  act,  not  like  a  German,  but  like  a 
Frenchman,  an  Englishman,  or  a  Spaniard.  The 
one  thing  now  needful  is  to  get  rid  of  all  sub- 
jective disturbance,  and  try  to  see  the  German 
as  he  is. 

That,  of  course,  is  no  easy  matter.    Generalisa- 
tions as  to  any  nation  are  dangerous,  and  gen- 


280  ALL  AND  SUNDRY 

eralisations  as  to  an  assemblage  of  tribes  (for 
that  is  really  what  '* Germany''  is)  are  especially 
untrustworthy.  There  are,  however,  one  or  two 
broad  truths  concerning  the  Germanic  peoples 
which  should  have  helped  us  to  avoid  our  past 
mistakes  and  may  be  of  some  use  in  divining  the 
future.  The  first  and  most  important  fact  about 
them  is  their  political  incapacity.  Under  the  rule 
of  a  brilliant  dynasty,  or  under  the  discipline 
of  a  masterful  alien  race,  the  German  tribes  have 
shown  themselves  capable  of  great  things.  But 
the  moment  the  pressure  is  removed  centrifugal 
influences  proclaim  themselves,  and  within  a  few 
years  a  powerful  Empire  has  become  a  mere 
political  expression.  German  history  has  the  lack 
of  continuity  which  makes  the  annals  of  Asia 
so  wearisome  and  perplexing.  It  may  be  sum- 
marised as  an  alternation  of  wild  dissipation  and 
periods  of  sick  headache;  the  intoxication  gener- 
ally lasts  half  a  century,  and  the  uneasy  tossings 
under  the  blankets  may  endure  for  two  or  three 
centuries.  The  great  Prussian  experiment  was  in 
essence  an  exact  counterpart  of  the  many  pre- 
vious attempts  to  bind  the  loose  and  shifting  Ger- 
manic body  into  one  organism,  and  the  brilliant 
success  of  that  experiment,  up  to  a  certain  point, 
was  due  to  the  fact  that  the  motive  power  was 
not  purely  German.     For  the  Prussian,  the  least 


THE  GERMAN  IN  PEACE  281 

generally  gifted  as  well  as  the  least  German  of 
all  the  Teutonic  tribes,  had  a  quality  denied  to 
the  rest  of  the  race.  He  could  rule  and  he  could 
organise.  The  rule  was  harsh  and  unsympathetic; 
the  organisation  was  wooden  and  rigid;  but,  such 
as  it  was,  it  offered  far  greater  elements  of  per- 
manence than  the  purely  personal  authority  of 
the  earlier  tribal  leaders. 

This  political  incapacity,  proved  by  the  records 
of  two  thousand  years,  seems  to  derive  from  two 
features  of  the  German  character — its  astonishing 
docility  and  its  proneness  to  enthusiasm  and  emo- 
tional excess.  It  is  not  surprising  that  theories 
concerning  the  **herd  instinct"  came  from  Ger- 
many, for  every  German  does  belong,  as  no  other 
human  being  does,  to  a  herd.  (In  no  other  part 
of  the  earth,  it  can  be  safely  said,  was  there  a 
society  to  promote  the  bestowal  of  the  name  of 
Wilhelm  on  male  babies.)  It  is,  I  think,  signiiBcant 
that  the  German  word  for  enthusiasm  may  be 
literally  translated  **Swarmery'' — the  temper  of 
a  crowd.  The  docility  of  the  German  enables  the 
herd  to  keep  together  so  long  as  the  obvious 
leader  remains  obvious;  but  the  enthusiasm  of  the 
German  is  a  danger  to  the  herd  when  the  leader- 
ship becomes  uncertain;  parts  of  the  herd  are 
apt  to  rush,  Gadarene  fashion,  down  steep  places 
into  Particularism  and  Anarchy.    There  must  have 


282  ALL  AND  SUNDRY 

been  many  times  in  the  history  of  Europe  when 
rulers  of  other  countries  envied  the  ease  with 
which  this  great  mass  of  men  was  moved  by  a 
single  will.  Louis  XIV.  at  the  height  of  his  power 
never  had  the  unquestioning  obedience  yielded  to 
some  of  the  German  Caesars;  there  were  always 
epigrams  to  modify  his  despotism.  But  the  weak- 
est French  ruler  was  never  reduced,  like  other 
Holy  Eoman  Emperors,  to  borrow  the  price  of 
a  few  weeks'  lodging  in  Rome,  because  he  could 
not  command  a  man,  a  horse,  or  a  stiver  in  all 
his   titular  dominion. 

The  whole  question  of  the  future  is  how  these 
two  German  characteristics,  with  all  their  poten- 
tialities of  strength  as  well  as  weakness,  can  be 
adjusted.  If  the  directing  power  fails,  we  may 
see  an  anarchy  in  Germany  such  as  has  often 
reigned  there  after  the  collapse  of  a  power  as 
haughty  as  that  of  the  Hohenzollern.  If  the 
directing  power  suffices  there  may  ensue  half  a 
century  or  more  of  the  sort  of  meekness  which 
Herr  Bauer  and  others  inculcate.  Many  things 
would  be  less  surprising;  when  the  German  docility 
and  the  German  enthusiasm  run  on  parallel  lines 
the  results  can  be  very  extraordinary.  We  have 
just  seen  how  the  whole  nation  was  inoculated 
with  the  worship  of  force  and  fraud;  but  it  is 
not  so  long  ago  that  it  was  fascinated  by  a  dreamy 


THE  GERMAN  IN  PEACE  283 

philosophy.  The  pork  butcher  who  deemed  it 
his  duty  to  be  on  familiar  terms  with  the  Abso- 
lute was  only  the  grandfather  of  the  sausage 
king  of  Frankfort  who  believed  in  nothing  but 
Weltmacht  and  Real-politik.  Such  miracles  may 
easily  be  repeated,  and  to  the  cult  of  the  German 
Michael  as  world-conqueror  may  succeed  that  of 
the  same  Michael  as  God-appointed  world-servant. 
One  race  of  professors  taught  the  **  biological 
necessity"  of  war  and  the  sanctity  of  racial  arro- 
gance; another  can  as  easily  proclaim  the  doctrine 
of  survival  by  work,  and  conquest  by  humility. 

It  would  be  rash  to  dogmatise  on  matters  so 
doubtful.  But  it  may  be  suggested  that  those 
observers  who  look  forward  with  some  concern 
to  the  competition  of  the  German  peoples  in 
industry  have  a  stronger  justification  than  those 
who  apprehend  an  early  return  to  the  spirit  of 
Bemhardi  and  the  policy  of  Bismarck.  That  spirit 
no  doubt  will  revive,  and  that  policy  return,  when 
the  German  tribes  approach  their  next  period  of 
intoxication,  and  find  a  due  leader  of  the  revels. 
But  the  devil  sick — if  only  with  sick-headache — 
is  really  for  the  time  being  a  devil  reformed, 
and  is  apt  to  go  great  lengths  in  the  matter  of 
piety.  The  Eeventlows  and  Westarps  may  rage, 
but  they  seem  less  the  authentic  voice  of  present- 
day   Germany   than   the   Bauers   and   Maximilian 


284  ALL  AND  SUNDRY 

Hardens.  The  note  of  the  latter  is  not  an  attrac- 
tive note.  It  suggests  less  the  **Peccavi''  of  the 
Christian  penitent  than  the  **I  can  do  it  on  my 
head''  of  the  captured  criminal.  But  it  may  have 
a  sincerity  as  well  as  a  philosophy  wholly  German. 


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